The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1

by A. R. Ammons

  the events a stick makes

  coming down a

  brook

  20scraping the bottom

  of the ledge-smooth spill—such

  events exist in memory

  & possibility as in

  a silver radiance: the salience,

  25in a bodiless arrogance,

  must preserve

  algal tracings or it

  loses further (already scared of loss)

  ground for possible self-imaginings:

  30interwork, interwork, it’s interwork

  that pays with mind because mind

  (if an entelechy)—

  shifting over here

  will suggest a tone-gap, slant,

  35a redshift as of direction

  1968

  Concerning the Exclusions of the Object

  Today I

  looked for myself,

  head full of

  stars,

  5cosmic

  dust in my teeth,

  and small,

  lost

  as earth in such a

  10world, I

  fell around my

  cell’s space

  and said

  I must be here—how

  15can I get the seeker

  home into these jaws:

  how

  can I expel these roomy stars?

  1965 (1969)

  The Makers

  We slung do out of the rosy alligator

  and

  finding him somewhat flattened

  opened

  5our kits to engines of more

  precise destruction

  and set in to settled, intense abuse:

  lovers and haters of dragons found

  themselves

  10grievously ready to do a little slicing

  back:

  it was hilarious, stupendous, and quite painful

  until

  ritualization so overtook us all

  15that the only product dropping out from

  slitting & stitching was

  pocketbooks pocketbooks pocketbooks

  from the colorful land of the

  1968 (1968)

  Levitation

  What are you doing

  up there

  said the ground

  that disastrous to seers

  5and saints

  is always around

  evening scores, calling down:

  I turned

  cramped in abstraction’s gilded loft

  10and

  tried to think of something beautiful to say:

  why

  I said failing

  I’m investigating the

  15coming together of things:

  the ground

  tolerant of such

  widened without sound

  while I turning

  20harmed my spine against

  the peak’s inner visionless ribs—

  heels free

  neck locked in the upward drift—

  and even the ground I think

  25grew shaky

  thinking something might be up there

  able to get away.

  1965

  Medium

  What small grace comes must

  count hard

  and then

  belong to the poem that is in need

  5not to my own redemption

  except

  as the mirror gives back the dream:

  since I’m guilty

  any crime

  10will do

  to pour my costly anguish to:

  but

  payment is exact,

  strict and clear: the purchase

  15never comes

  or if so becomes a song

  that takes its blessings to itself

  and gets away.

  1965 (1969)

  Transfer

  When the bee lands the

  morning glory bloom

  dips some and weaves:

  the coming true of

  5weight

  from weightless wing-held

  air

  seems at the touch

  implausible.

  1967

  Monday

  Windowjarring gusts again

  this morning:

  the surf slapped back white:

  shore cherry bushes

  5trying to

  stay put or get away:

  the vague storm’s

  aroused a weekend of

  hyphochondria: today

  10the doctors’ offices

  froth with all

  that tried to stay unruffled.

  1968

  Pluralist

  Winds light & variable break

  upward out

  of cones or drop cones down

  that turn up

  5umbrellalike from the

  ground

  and even the maple tree’s large

  enough to express contrary

  notions

  10one side going west & the

  other east or northeast or one

  up & the other

  down: multiple angling:

  the nodding, twisting, the

  15stepping out & back

  is like being of two minds

  at least

  and with the comforting

  (though scary) exemplum

  20that maple trees

  go nowhere at all

  1969 (1970)

  Here & Now

  Yes but

  it’s October and the leaves

  are going

  fast: rain weighted

  5them and then

  a breeze

  sent them in shoals clear across

  the street

  revealing

  10especially in the backyard

  young maple

  branch-tip buds that assume

  time as far away as

  the other side of the sun

  1968 (1970)

  The Run-Through

  You’re sick:

  you’re on your back:

  it’s hot:

  they take off a leg:

  5you wake up and feel,

  both hands:

  you develop pride

  in the sewmanship

  and show it:

  10a tube in your skull bursts:

  you bleed half

  still:

  with one arm

  you show how

  15the other flops:

  you show, show:

  speechless with pantomime:

  you’re on your back:

  it’s hot:

  20they take the other one off:

  then you fail

  some

  with the difficulty

  of redundancy:

  25you’re on your back:

  you are heavy and hard:

  your heart bursts and you are weightless:

  you ride to a high stillness:

  in death’s cure, you exit right.

  1969 (1969)

  The Put-Down Come On

  You would think I’d be a specialist in contemporary

  literature: novels, short stories, books of poetry,

  my friends write many of them: I don’t read much

  and some drinks are too strong for me: my empty-headed

  5contemplation is still where the ideas of permanence

  and transience fuse in a single body, ice, for example,

  or a leaf: green pushes white up the slope: a maple

  leaf gets the wobbles in a light wind and comes loose

  half-ready: where what has always happened and what

  10has never happened before seem for an instant reconciled:

  that takes up most of my time and keeps me uninformed:

  but the slope, after maybe a thousand years, may spill

  and the ice have a very different look withdrawing into

  the lofts of cold: only a little of that kind
of

  15thinking flashes through: but turning the permanent also

  into the transient takes up all the time that’s left.

  1968

  The City Limits

  When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold

  itself but pours its abundance without selection into every

  nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

  that birds’ bones make no awful noise against the light but

  5lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider

  the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

  swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,

  not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider

  the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

  10bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped

  guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no

  way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

  that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,

  each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then

  15the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

  leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark

  work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes

  and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

  1970 (1971)

  Previously Uncollected Poems from

  COLLECTED POEMS 1951–1971 (1972)

  To the memory of my mother and father

  The Pieces of My Voice

  The pieces of my voice have been thrown

  away I said turning to the hedgerows

  and hidden ditches

  Where do the pieces of

  5my voice lie scattered

  The cedarcone said you have been ground

  down into and whirled

  Tomorrow I must go look under the clumps of

  marshgrass in wet deserts

  10and in dry deserts

  when the wind falls from the mountain

  inquire of the chuckwalla what he saw go by

  and what the sidewinder found

  risen in the changing sand

  15I must run down all the pieces

  and build the whole silence back

  As I look across the fields the sun

  big in my eyes I see the hills

  the great black unwasting silence and

  20know I must go out beyond the hills and seek

  for I am broken over the earth—

  so little remains

  for the silent offering of my death

  1955

  Chaos Staggered Up the Hill

  Chaos staggered up the hill

  and got the daisies dirty

  that were pretty along the road:

  messy chaos I said

  5but then in cooler mind saw

  incipient eyes revolving in it

  with possibly incipient sorrow

  and had to admire how

  it got along at all

  10in its kind of weather:

  passing, it engulfed me

  and I couldn’t know dissolving

  it had rhizobia with it

  to make us green some other place.

  1953

  Eolith

  I give you the wretched sympathy stone

  tears there is no end to the common matter

  dropped like suds water

  down garbage shutes in places

  5if you wish

  Enlil has whipped your thighs with cane

  and the possibility of unloading pity is

  not greater than my giving it

  there have been days like

  10wasting

  ziggurats while

  your past spoils what is quick like river flies

  days like

  the sweep of a steppe I have gone out

  15like a northwind over the Nile

  cavernous

  with Florida muddy hellish fountains of me it

  is quite terrible

  to think of it

  20a shortening of days locusts dark west sounds

  of oak limbs under pigeons

  splitting in the night

  roof mounting troubling clay gods river wind

  I have sketched pyramids for

  25viewing splendid Hamlet

  a task waking at night in dark speed

  the pelican’s over bays

  carrying this eolith

  1952

  Hymn V

  Assure us you side with order: throw

  off atomicities, dots, events, endless

  successions: reveal an ancient inclination

  we can adore and ritualize

  5with sapphirine cones and liturgies,

  refine through ages of

  canonical admissions and rejections; a

  consistent, emerging inclination to prefer

  the circling continuum, void receptacle,

  10and eternal now: spare

  us the accidents, controversies, novelties,

  constant adaptations, the working truths and

  tentative assessments, the upheavals and unrest

  of an unquiet past shaken by

  15the addition of a modern fact: package

  knowledge, square-off questions, let them in

  triumphs of finality be categorically

  answered and filed: a

  constant known yields all time to love: let our

  20words grow out of and strengthen the authority

  of old rich usage, upholding what upholds.

  Spring Song

  I picked myself up from the dust again

  and went on

  phoenix not with another set of wings but with

  no other choice

  5Oh I said to my soul may a deep

  luminosity seize you

  and my blanched soul smiled from its need and

  dwelt on in the pale country of its bones

  A field opened on the right

  10and I went in

  slipping arms-high through bleaches

  of golden broom grass

  and whirled with the wind sizzling there

  Look said the golden tussocks and I

  15looked down at the rising shoots

  Where, if spring will not keep you,

  will you go

  I said to the broom straws

  so I cried

  20and stooping to scold the shoots fell

  in with their green enhancing tips

  and nearly died

  getting away from the dividing place

  At dusk the sun set and it was dark and having

  25found no place to leave my loyalty

  I slaughtered it by the road and spilled its

  blood on sand while the red moon rose

  1957 (1958)

  Come Prima

  I know

  there is

  perfection in the being

  of my being,

  5that I am

  holy in amness

  as stars or

  paperclips,

  that the universe,

  10moving from void to void,

  pours in and out

  through me:

  there is a point,

  only itself,

  15that fills space,

  an emptiness

  that is plenitude:

  a void that is all being,

  a being that is void:

  20I am perfect:

  the wind is perfect:

  ditchwater, running, is perfect:

  everything is:

  I raise my hand

  1957

  Terminus

  Coming to a rockwall

  I looked back

  to the winding gulch

  and said

  5is this as far as you can go:

  an
d the gulch, rubble

  frazzled with the windy remains

  of speech, said

  comers here turn and go back:

  10so I sat down, resolved

  to try

  the problem out, and

  every leaf fell

  from my bush of bones

  15and sand blew down the winding

  gulch and

  eddying

  rounded out a bowl

  from the terminal wall:

  20I sat in my bones’ fragile shade

  and worked the

  knuckles of my mind till

  the altering earth broke to

  mend the fault:

  25I rose and went through.

  1959 (1971)

  Back Country

  The sun binds:

  the small cold

  moon

  leading spins you,

  5marionette:

  the silver ruts of backwoods roads

  narrowing

  straiten your interests:

  you keep moving:

  10return is to your vitiations:

  ahead, the road,

  pure of you;

  the pasture hills

  fractured with

  15hurls

  of white rock,

  unsurrendered to

  your spoiling eyes;

  plum blossoms

  20uncast at your breath:

  you have come