by A. R. Ammons
mind idles like a pyramid: oxides
“under proper atmospheric conditions” become
acids and rain a fine broad bleaching:
man’s a plant parasite: so I drop
10down to the exchange, CO2↔O2, and
find dread there, just dread: too
much care fuddles me dull:
beef hormones bloom monstrous
with tenderness:
15but I won’t take up the scaring cause
and can’t think of a thing to uphold.
1969 (1970)
Tooling Up
I cut a new thread on it this morning,
smeared a little dab (a small glob) of
pipedope around (for perfect action,
should the opportunity arise or
5withdrawal prove premature) and
stuck myself out again: a
formal—possibly too formal—stance,
a willed extension, as if in
expectation of pain:
10well but I’ve done my share: my
mind’s at ease: I’m
obviously out, my
intentions are obviously firm.
1968
Father
I dreamed my father flicked
in his grave
then like a fish in water
wrestled with the ground
5surfaced and wandered:
I could not find him
through woods, roots, mires
in his bad shape: and
when I found him he was
10dead again and had to be
re-entered in the ground:
I said to my mother I still
have you: but out of the
dream I know she died
15sixteen years before his
first death:
as I become a child again
a longing that will go away
only with my going grows.
1968 (1969)
Sumerian
I have grown a marsh dweller
subject to floods and high winds,
drinking brackish water on long hunts,
brushing gnat smoke
5from clumps of reeds, have known
the vicissitudes of silt, of
shifting channels flush
by dark upland rains, of mounds
rising no more firmly than
10monsters from the water:
on the southern salty
banks near the gulf the ducks
and flying vees of geese have
shunned me: the bouncing spider’s net,
15strung wet over narrows of reeds, has
broken terror dawn cold across my face:
rising with a handful of broken shells
from sifted underwater mud
I have come to know how high
20the platform is, beyond approach,
of serenity and blue temple tiles.
1955 (1956)
Hippie Hop
I have no program for
saving this world or scuttling
the next: I know no political,
sexual, racial cures: I make
5analogies, my bucketful of
flowers: I give flowers to people
of all policies, sexes, and races
including the vicious, the
uncertain, and the white.
1968
Garden
I have sung
delphiniums
seasonless, seedless
out of debris,
5stone-white asters
out of shale:
I’ve made it this far
turning between made sights
and recognitions:
10and now
if everything becomes,
as it could,
naturalized, returned,
I may pick hyacinths
15here real and tender
in the ruse.
1965
Hymn IV
I hold you responsible for
every womb’s neck
clogged with
killing growth
5and for ducks on the bay
barking like hounds
all night
their wintering dreams
responsible for every action of
10the brain that gives
me mind
and for all light
for the fishroe’s
birth spawning forage to
15night eels
nosing the tidal banks
I keep you existent at least as
a ghost crab
moon-extinguished his crisp
20walk silenced on broken shells
answering at least as
the squiggling copepod
for the birthing and aging of
life’s all-clustered grief
25You have enriched us with
fear and contrariety
providing the searcher
confusion for his search
teaching by your snickering
30wisdom an autonomy
for man
Bear it all
and keep me from my enemies’
wafered concision and zeal
35I give you back to yourself
whole and undivided
1957 (1958)
The Mark
I hope I’m
not right
where frost
strikes the
5butterfly:
in the back
between
the wings.
1965
Loft
I live in a bodiless loft,
no joists, beams,
or walls:
I huddle high,
5arch my back against the stiff
fact of coming down:
my house admits to being
only above the level of most
perception:
10I shudder and make do:
I don’t look down.
1965
Poetics
I look for the way
things will turn
out spiralling from a center,
the shape
5things will take to come forth in
so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
10totally its apparent self:
I look for the forms
things want to come as
from what black wells of possibility,
how a thing will
15unfold:
not the shape on paper—though
that, too—but the
uninterfering means on paper:
not so much looking for the shape
20as being available
to any shape that may be
summoning itself
through me
from the self not mine but ours.
1965 (1969)
Working with Tools
I make a simple assertion
like a nice piece of stone
and you
alert to presence and entrance
5man your pick and hammer
and by chip and deflection
distract simplicity
and cut my assertion
back to mangles, little heaps:
10well, baby, that’s the way
you get along: it’s all right,
I understand such
ways of being afraid:
sometimes you want my come-on
15hard, something to
take in and be around:
sometimes you want
a vaguer touch: I understand
and won’t give assertion up.
1968 (1968)
Doubling the Nerve
In the bleak time look for no cooperation
from the birds: crows show up, black blatant
clarions in the gawky branches, to dominate
5grate from tree to tree, around:
remember
the redbird then in the floral plum, the
bluebird nesting in the apple bough:
remember the white streak in the woodpecker’s
10wings against shadblow:
expect abundance
to yield nothing to privation, no easing
off by contrary song: the quiet world, so
quiet, needs to cut its definitions wide
15so snow can rinse across the hard lake.
1969 (1969)
Making
In wingbar light
the mockingbird
takes the day into
making
5takes the clouds still
shipping stars
takes the spring trees’
black small leaves
and with staid motions
10and many threads
brings into
view
lightens
and when morning
15shows sings
not a whit more beautifully
because it has been dark.
1968 (1969)
Dominion
I said
Mr. Schafer
did you get up to see the comet:
and
5he said
Oh no
let it go by, I don’t care:
he has leaves to rake
and the
10plunger on his washing machine isn’t working right:
he’s not amused
by ten-million-mile tails
or any million-mile-an-hour
universal swoosh
15or
frozen gases
lit by disturbances
across our
solar arcs
1965 (1970)
Round
I sat down
from too much
spinning & spun
the big spin’s calm:
5I said
this is
like it is:
bluebirds
stripped my shoelaces
10for nesting:
pill bugs took the cool
under my shoesoles
and weeds, sprung up,
made me their
15windbreak:
I said
this is
like it is
and got up turning
20out of the still into
the spinning dance.
1968 (1969)
Tight
I should have had my macadam
driveway re-sealed this fall but
saved a few bucks & let it
go: now the rain pools
5out there and the pools
graduate toward each other
with long necks of lonesome
longing: but there’s a sort
of idle rain, like today’s,
10when the drops, large &
sparse, pop huge bubbles
that cruise around smooth
uneventful country: I sat out
there watching a couple of
15hours from the garage and got
rapturous trying to think why
that particular show (not to
mention how) ever got devised:
it makes me wonder which way
20the economy should be sent.
1968 (1969)
The Woodsroad
I stop on
the woodsroad,
listen:
I take myself in:
5I let go the locust’s
burr-squall, pointless,
high in the pine:
I turn all
the clouds crossing
10above me loose:
I drop free of
the fern’s sori:
I zoom home through,
as if hailstruck,
15caterpillar-pocked
whiteoak leaves:
I take myself
all in, let go &
float free: then
20break into
clouds, white dots on
dead stalks, robin
mites: then, I’m here:
I listen: call.
1966 (1969)
WCW
I turned in
by the bayshore
and parked,
the crosswind
5hitting me hard
side the head,
the bay scrappy
and working:
what a
10way to read
Williams! till
a woman came
and turned
her red dog loose
15to sniff
(and piss
on)
the dead horseshoe
crabs.
1962 (1969)
Saying
I went out on
a rustling day
and
lectured the willow:
5it nodded profoundly
and held
out many arms:
I held my
arms up and said things:
10I spoke up:
I turned into and
from the wind:
I looked all around:
dusk, sunless,
15starless, came:
the wind
fell and left us
in the open
still and bent.
1965 (1968)
Looking Over the Acreage
I wonder what I should do now:
probably
I should wait
for the onset or oncoming of a large order,
5an aqueduct perhaps
with an endless (theoretically) echo of arches
but which a valley would
break into individual aqueductal shape:
or perhaps an abecedarian procedure
10though there are some
problems there
(not everyone is agreed on
what is what)
or I could riffle through the zodiac:
15then there are
triads, pentads, dodecahedra,
earth-water-air-fire,
the loft
from indivisibility to all-is-one
20(which is where nothing is anything):
descents are less usual
having associations of undesirability
(cities, societies are
exclusive):
25the great advantage of an overall arbitrary
order is that one
need not wait until he has earned an order
but may go ahead with some serenity arch
by arch
30content if minor forms appear:
one may do that:
I don’t know what to do:
no matter what I think I’m probably going to wind up
in both wings of another balance:
35fabulous, ex
cit
ing, over
populated
Hong Kong: yeah.
1968
Gain
Last night my mind limped
down the halls of its citadel,
wavered by the lofty columns
as if a loosened door had
5let the wind try inside
for what could go:
dreamed of the fine pane-work
of lofty windows it
would not climb to again to see,
10of curved attics aflight with
angels it would not
disturb again: felt the
tenancy of its own house,
shuffled to the great door and
15looked out into its permanent dwelling.
1965 (1969)
Off
Morning’s the woman time of day,
light rising
as in a small failure,
the parting of fog
5to cloud,
&n
bsp; the casual centerless thunder
and the rain beginning
so sporadic
the eye can hardly weave the evidence
10and then rain
deep rain
windless,
the iris unshook from its beads,
the firs like old old
15men dripping their bottoms wet:
I catch my breath
I throw my clothes on
I have to get out of the house and,
out, my eyes’
20concision shoots to kill.
1968
Treaties
My great wars close:
ahead, papers,
signatures, the glimmering
in shade of
5leaf and raised wine:
orchards, orchards,
vineyards, fields:
spiralling slow time while
the medlar
10smarts and glows and
empty nests
come out in the open:
fall rain then stirs
the black creek and
15the small leaf slips in.
1966 (1969)
Convergence
My sorrows he said
begin so
deep they join only
at extreme, skinny height:
5so he climbed
and water fell
smooth, chasms
lifted into ripples
and earth’s slow
10curve
merged, emerged:
he stood capable
poised
on the peak of