The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1
Page 36
15illusion’s pyramid.
1965
Project
My subject’s
still the wind still
difficult to
present
5being invisible:
nevertheless should I
presume it not
I’d be compelled
to say
10how the honeysuckle bushlimbs
wave themselves:
difficult
beyond presumption
(1970)
North Jersey
Ninth-circle concrete
bending in
high suasions like
formal reductions of
5perfect fears: refineries
oiling the air:
burnt reeds, a chemical
scald: gouged land &
shoved mounds:
10and man
burning fast motions along
the steely wreaths,
the steely wreaths.
1968
Ship
Nobody comes here to stay: that’s
incredible: and nothing to stay:
the bird tilts tail-up in the high
branch and tilts time away:
5well, I don’t want to think about that:
the phony comfort about timelessness
time is supposed to work back
into: I’ve seen no sign of that:
nothing on the re-make or comeback: the
10crest breaks, whatever side the sea’s on:
the crest bears in and out in a single
motion, not a single point unmoving:
men and women in your loveliness, I cry
nothing against the wall forever giving in.
1969
Play
Nothing’s going to become of anyone
except death:
therefore: it’s okay
to yearn
5too high:
the grave accommodates
swell rambunctiousness &
ruin’s not
compromised by magnificence:
10that cut-off point
liberates us to the
common disaster: so
pick a perch—
apple branch for example in bloom—
15tune up
and
drill imagination right through necessity:
it’s all right:
it’s been taken care of:
20is allowed, considering
1969 (1970)
Spinejacking
One of these days I’m gonna leave you, baby:
I know it: I can tell:
my bellyfat shakes and knows:
one of these days I’m gonna just
5up and outsy: like that:
my dog knows: he
turns around a lot lately:
I don’t know if the parrot knows:
it isn’t just lately she started scratching:
10you always were a kind of bushy bitch:
one of these days I’m gonna just pack off:
you get to make some new
arrangements, then: you like to change
things around, change this one:
15one of these days I’m gonna leave you, baby:
I know it: I can tell:
my bellyfat shakes and knows.
1968 (1970)
Shore Fog
On the cedars and yews
this morning
big drops
(as of rain)
5held by finny hands
(but not rain):
fog kept the night all
night awake
and left this morning
10in addition to these
big clarities
a close-worked white drift
too multiple to
prevent some dozing.
1968
Meteorology
Reality’s gossed guzzlings,
bristle-eyed
in light
mare’s-tails of bleached
5speech have
unmaimed the handshrunk
blessings,
declotted the conveyances:
the bleakies
10sung against
sweep soaring (that’s
delightful) into
high seed
but come back
15heebies and harpies
ever
scratching &
fartching:
confine self to
20“extremities & superfices”
the unenterable core’s rusty
lode shut up.
1968
Exotic
Science outstrips
other modes &
reveals more of
the crux of the matter
5than we can calmly
handle
1968
Hosts
Secrets are slimber black worms
whose appetites are red:
they ball up with searching periphery:
sometimes they string out, roam
5the body in a panic of mismanagement:
it’s nice when they slacken
(wads of worthy long fellows) and go
to sleep: often they’re
sleepless:
10some people have more
than others which
makes a difference.
1968
Crevice
Seeing into myth is
knowledge myth can’t sanctify:
separating symbol and
translucence
5disembodies belief:
still, nothing’s changed:
the slope that
falls here toward the lake
has held
10since the first mind figured
in and out of shape:
but a constant in change
no hand or sight has
given definition to:
15how are we new from the slow
alterations now:
we stand around dazed
and separate, sunless and eventful:
mind can’t charge the slope:
20again we’ve fallen wise.
1966 (1969)
Transducer
Solar floes
big as continents
plunge rasping
against each other:
5the noise
flaring into space,
into thinner & thinner
material means,
becomes two million
10degrees of heat.
1968
Mean
Some drippage and spillage in
active situations:
efficiency’s detritus,
fall-out from happenstance:
5a, probably calculable,
instrank of frabigity:
people accustomed to the wide terrain
know, with little alarm, some
clumps are dissolving:
10singular’s the terrible view
from which the classy gods
take up glassy lives.
1968
Banking
Sometimes I see an
enormous loveliness:
I say help like a
deprived nation:
5this loveliness
moves & the motion
starves rivers:
the air where
this motion
10moves feels
expensive: I go
out where this
is going by and
come back in narrow
15about the nose
with some
wilted plants & all
my old peeled sticks.
1968
Elegy for a Jet Pilot
The blast skims
over the string
of takeoff lights
and
5relinquishing
place and time
lofts to
sep
aration:
the plume, rose
10silver, grows
across the
high-lit evening
sky: by this
Mays Landing creek
15shot pinecones,
skinned huckleberry
bush, laurel
swaths define
an unbelievably
20particular stop.
1964 (1969)
Countering
The crystal of reason
grows
down
into my loves and
5terrors, halts
or muddles
flow,
casting me to
shine or break:
10the savage peoples
wood slopes, shore rocks
with figures of dream
who struggle
to save or
15have his life:
to keep the
life and
shape, to keep
the sphere, I hide
20contours,
progressions between
turning lines,
toward the higher
reason
25that contains the war
of shape and loss
at rest.
1965 (1970)
The Quince Bush
The flowering quince bush
on the back hedge has been
run through by a morning
glory vine
5and this morning three blooms
are open as if for all light,
sound, and motion: their adjustment
to light is
pink, though they reach for
10stellar reds and core violets:
they listen as if for racket’s
inner silence
and focus, as if to starve, all motion:
patterns of escaped sea
15they tip the defeated, hostile,
oceanic wind:
elsewhere young men scratch and fire:
a troubled child shudders to a freeze:
an old man bursts finally and
20rattles down
clacking slats: the caterpillar pierced
by a wasp egg blooms inside with
the tender worm: wailing
walls float
25luminous with the charge of grief:
a day pours through a morning glory
dayblossom’s adequate, poised,
available center.
1967 (1968)
Square
The formulation that
saves damns:
consequently (unsavable)
a periphery riffler
5I thread the
outskirts of mandate,
near enough
to be knowingly away &
far enough away to
10wind and snap through
riddling underbrush.
1968 (1970)
Autumn Song
The large is gone—well, it
was mostly vacant: the big
time,
a past and future scoop,
5gone, too,
but it was too
big to move much:
I picked up a wet leaf
today: it
10left its shape moist
on the macadam
and there was an earthworm
his arteries
shining in the brilliant light—
15it really was brilliant today—and
he
panicked at both ends
with the threat of drying out:
a basic
20concern I shared with him
and share with him
for I lifted him with the leaf
and took him to the grass:
I’ll bet he knows now
25he can be seen through and turn
into a little thong:
I knew it all along though I’m
not in grass
and the leaves that fall
30give me no sense of refuge.
1968 (1969)
Early Morning in Early April
The mist rain this morning made glass,
a glittery preponderance, hung baubles
spangled to birch-twig jewelry,
and made the lawn support, item by
5item, the air’s weight, a lesson as a
various instruction with a theme: and
how odd, the maple branches underlaced
with glaring beadwork: what to make of it:
what to make of a mist whose characteristic
10is a fine manyness coming dull in a wide
oneness: what to make of the glass
erasures, glass: the yew’s partly lost.
1969
Reversal
The mt in my head surpasses you
I said
becomes at the base
more nearly incalculable with
5bush
more divisive with suckers and roots
and at the peak
far less visible
plumed and misty
10opening from unfinal rock to air:
arrogance arrogance
the mt said
the wind in your days
accounts for this arrogance
1967 (1970)
The Confirmers
The saints are gathering at the real
places, trying tough skin on sharp
conscience,
endurance in the hot spots—
5searching out to define, come up
against, mouth
the bitterest bit:
you can hear them yelping
down in the dark greeny groves of
10condemnation:
their lips slice back
with jittery suctions, cold
insweeps of conjured grief:
if they, footloose, wham up the
15precise damnation,
consolation
may be no more than us trudging
down from paunchy dinners,
swatting hallelujah arms at
20dusk bugs and telling them pure
terror has obviously made them
earnest of mind and of motion lithe.
1968 (1968)
Involved
They say last night radiation
storms spilled down the meridians,
cool green tongues of solar
flares, non-human & not
5to be humanized, licking at
human life: an arctic
air mass shielded us: had I been
out I’d have said,
knowing them masked, burn me: or
10thanks for the show:
my spine would have flared
sympathetic colors:
as it is I slept through,
burning from a distant source.
1967
Admission
The wind high along the headland,
mosquitoes keep low: it’s
good to be out:
schools of occurring whitecaps
5come into the bay,
leap, and dive:
gulls stroll
long strides down the shore wind:
every tree shudders utterance:
10motions—sun, water, wind, light—
intersect, merge: here possibly
from the crest of the right moment
one might break away from the final room.
1966 (1970)
Mission
The wind went over
me
saying
why are you so distressed:
5oh I said I
can’t seem to make
anything
round enough to last:
but why
10the wind
said
should you be so distressed
as if anything here belonged to you
as if anything here were your concern.
1965 (1967
)
Cut the Grass
The wonderful workings of the world: wonderful,
wonderful: I’m surprised half the time:
ground up fine, I puff if a pebble stirs:
I’m nervous: my morality’s intricate: if
5a squash blossom dies, I feel withered as a stained
zucchini and blame my nature: and
when grassblades flop to the little red-ant
queens burring around trying to get aloft, I blame
my not keeping the grass short, stubble
10firm: well, I learn a lot of useless stuff, meant
to be ignored: like when the sun sinking in the
west glares a plane invisible, I think how much
revelation concealment necessitates: and then I
think of the ocean, multiple to a blinding
15oneness and realize that only total expression
expresses hiding: I’ll have to say everything
to take on the roundness and withdrawal of the deep dark:
less than total is a bucketful of radiant toys.
1969 (1970)
The Limit
This left hand
side is
the clear edge of
imposition: the other the
5thrusting and breaking to possibility:
in between
a tumbling, folding under,
amounting to downward
progression:
10the prisoner is not much enamored of compression:
I wonder if this slight
tumbling, brookish, is a large enough motion
to prevent lodged sticks & harrow beavers:
apparently it
15can
reach out broadly across the page in space-hungry gesture: