by A. R. Ammons
to back country:
hogweed’s hard yellow
heads
25crowd the ruts
apart: there are
wagon tracks
and, splitting the weed,
the hoofprints
30of long-stepping, unshod mules:
the hill people will
not discern
your wound:
you will pitch hay,
35wash your
face in a staved bucket,
soap your arms with
chinaberry leaves,
rinse
40well-water clean:
no: they will know
you:
keep on:
the sun calls:
45the moon has you:
the ruts
diminish you to distance:
a hill puts you out.
Christmas Eve
When cold, I huddle up, foetal, cross
arms:
but in summer, sprawl:
secret is plain old
5surface area,
decreased in winter, retaining: summer no
limbs touching—
radiating:
everything is physical:
10chemistry is physical:
electrical noumenal mind
is:
(I declare!)
put up Christmas tree this afternoon:
15fell
asleep in big chair: woke up at
3:12 and it
was snowing outside, was white!
Christmas Eve tonight: Joseph
20is looking for a place:
Mary smiles but
her blood is singing:
she will have to lie down:
hay is warm:
25some inns keep only
the public room warm: Mary
is thinking, Nice time
to lie down,
good time to be brought down by this necessity:
30I better get busy
and put the lights on—can’t find
extension cord:
Phyllis will be home, will say, The
tree doesn’t have any lights!
35I have tiny winking lights, too:
she will like
them: she went to see her mother:
my mother is dead: she is
deep in the ground, changed: if she
40rises, dust will blow all over the place and
she will stand there shining,
smiling: she will feel good:
she will want
to go home and fix supper: first she
45will hug me:
an actual womb bore Christ,
divinity into the world:
I hope there are births to lie down to
back
50to divinity,
since we all must die away from here:
I better look for the cord:
we’re going to
the Plaza for dinner:
55tonight, a buffet: tomorrow there, we’ll
have a big Christmas
dinner:
before I fell asleep, somebody
phoned, a Mr. Powell: he asked
60if I wanted to
sell my land
in Mays Landing: I don’t know:
I have several pieces, wonder
if he wants them all,
65wonder what I ought to quote:
earth: so many acres of earth:
own:
how we own who are owned! well,
anyway, he won’t care
70about that—said he would
call back Monday: I will
tell him something then:
it’s nearly Christmas, now:
they are all going into the city:
75some have sent ahead for reservations:
the inns are filling up:
Christ was born
in a hay barn among the warm cows and the
donkeys kneeling down: with Him divinity
80swept into the flesh
and made it real.
1960 (1970)
Communication
All day—I’m
surprised—the
orange tree, windy, sunny,
has said nothing:
5nevertheless,
four ripe oranges have
dropped and several
dozen
given up a ghost of green.
1964 (1965)
The Whole Half
In his head
the lost woman,
shriveled,
dry, vestigial,
5cried
distantly
as if from
under leaves
or from roots
10through the mouths
of old stumps—
cry part his
at her loss,
uneasiness
15of something
forgotten
that was nearly pain:
but the man-oak
rising has grown
20occupying
a full place
and finding its whole
dome man
looks outward
25across the
stream
to the calling
siren tree,
whole—woman.
1964
Bay Bank
The redwing blackbird
lighting
dips deep the
windy bayridge
5reed but
sends a song up
reed and wind rise to.
1964
Money
Five years ago I planted a buttonwood slip:
three years ago I had to fit myself
into its shade, a leg or arm
left over in light:
5now I approach casually and
lost in shade more than
twice my height and several times my width
sit down in a chair
and let the sun move through a long doze.
1964
Fall Creek
It’s late September now
and yesterday
finally
after two dry months
5the rain came—so quiet,
a crinkling
on
flagstone and leaf,
but lasting:
10this morning
when I walked the bridge over
the gorge
that had been soundless
water shot out over rock
15and the rain roared
1964 (1972)
Utensil
How does the pot pray:
wash me, so I gleam?
prays, crack my enamel:
let the rust in
1964
The Fall
I’ve come down a lot on the tree of terror:
scorned I used
to risk the thin bending lofts
where shaking with stars
5I fell asleep, rattled, wakened, and wept:
I’ve come down a lot from the skinny
cone-locked lofts
past the grabbers and tearers
past the shooing limbs, past the fang-set
10eyes
and hate-shocked mouths:
I rest on sturdier branches and sometimes
risk a word
that shakes the tree with laughter or reproof—
15am prized for that:
I’ve come down into the
odor and warmth
of others: so much so that I
sometimes hit the ground and go
20off a ways looking, trying out:
if startled, I break for the tree,
shinny up to safety, the eyes and
mouths large and hands working to my concern:
my risks and escapes are occasionally
25spoken of, approved: I’ve come down a lot.
1965 (1972)
April
&
nbsp; Midafternoon
I come
home to the apartment
and find the janitor
5looking up and
policeman looking
up (said he’d
go call Bill—has
a ladder)
10and all the old
white-haired women
out looking up
at
the raccoon asleep
15on the chimney top:
went up the ivy
during the night and
dazed still with
winter sleep can’t
20tell whether
to come down
or take
up sleep again—
what a blossom!
1965
Lion::Mouse
Cutting off the
offending parts
plucking out
they were so many I
5tore the woods
up
with my roaring losses
but kept on
dividing, snipping away,
10uprooting and
casting out
till
I scampered
under
15a leaf
and considering
my remnant self
squeaked
a keen squeak of joy
1966
Breaks
From silence to silence:
as a woods stream
over a
rock holding on
5breaks into clusters of sound
multiple and declaring as
leaves, each one,
filling
the continuum between leaves,
10I stand up,
fracturing the equilibrium,
hold on,
my disturbing, skinny speech
declaring
15the cosmos.
1966
Heat
The storm built till
midnight
then full to quietness
broke:
5wind
struck across the surf
hills and
lightning, sheeting
& snapping, cast
10quick shadows, shook
the rain loose:
this morning
the flowers on the steep bank
look bedraggled
15with blessings.
1966
Definitions
The weed bends
down and
becomes a bird:
the bird
5flies white
through winter
storms: I
have got my
interest up in
10leaf
transparencies:
where I am
going, nothing
of me will remain:
15yet, I’ll
drift through the
voices of
coyotes, drip
into florets by
20a mountain rock.
1966 (1971)
Path
Leaves are eyes:
light through
translucences
prints
5visions that
wander:
I go for a walk and my image
is noticed by the protoplasm:
I wonder what visions
10the birch-heart
keeps dark:
I know their cost!
the heart shot
thin that
15pays winter hard:
I am run so seen and thin:
I see and shake
1966 (1972)
Mediation
The grove kept us dry,
subtracting from
the shower much
immediacy:
5but then distracted us
for hours, dropping
snaps faint as the twigs
of someone coming.
1966
Snow Whirl
The snow turning
crosshatches the air
into
tilted squares:
5I sit and think
where to dwell:
surely, somewhere before,
since snow
began to fall,
10the wind has
managed to turn
snow into
squares of emptiness:
dwell there
15or with the flakes
on one side of the motion
squareless,
dropping in an
unreturning slant.
1967
Reward
He climbed hard,
ledge to ledge, rise,
plateau,
caught his breath,
5looked around,
conceived the distances:
climbed on
high, hard: and made the peak
9from which the
major portion of the view was
descent.
1967
Timing
The year’s run out
to the tip
blossom on the snapdragon
stalk.
1967 (1968)
Trouble Making Trouble
The hornet as if
stung twists
in the first cold,
buzzes wings
5that wrench him
across the ground but
take on no
loft or
direction:
10scrapes with feelers
his eyes to find
clearance
in the crazing
dim of things, folds
15to bite his tail (or
sting his
head) to life or
death—hits the
grill of a stormdrain
20and drops.
1967 (1968)
Rome Zoo
Subtract from that shower
each leaf’s take
and the oak’s
shadow is bright dust:
5great
yellow helium
rabbits with bluetipped ears
stick the mist-weight
rain and, from high
10tussling, yield
all the way to the ground:
the rhinoceros’s back darkens.
1967
Alternatives
I can tell you what I need is one of those
poles Archimedes, thrust
into an unparalleled transform of intellect to power,
imagined dangling on the end of which he could
5move the world with: he was as much a dreamer
as I was (sic): I thought, given
a great height, I could do it with words:
still in a sense I have the dream, I have
Archimedes’s dream, that is, it hasn’t been tried yet
10for sure with a pole: with words, I tried it.
1967
Positions
I can tell you what I need is for
somebody to asseverate I’m a poet
and in an embroilment and warfare of onrushing words
heightened by opposing views
5to maintain I lie down to no man in
the character and thrust of my speech
and that everybody who is neglecting me far
though it be, indeed, from his mind
is incurring a guilt complex
10he’ll have to reckon with later on
and suffer over (I am likely to be
recalcitrant with leniency):
what I need I mean is a champion or even
a host of champions,
15a phalanx of enthusiasts, driving a spearhead
or one or two of those big amphibian trucks
through the peopled ocean of my neglect:
I mean I don’t want to sound fancy but
what I could use at the moment is
20a little destruction
perpetrated in my favor.
1967
Reassessing
I can tell you what I need, what I need
is a soft counselor laboriously gentle
his warm dry hands moving with a vanishing persistence
to explain to me how I fell into this backwater,
5verse: oh what is the efficacy of
this lowgrade hallucination, this rhythm not even
a scientific sine curve:
I mean I need him to wave it all away,
syllables spilling through the screens of
10his soft joints, erasing
in an enchantment similar to that I would evoke
all this primitive tribal hooting
into some wooden or ratty totemic ear:
boy, I need to hear about the systems analysts,
15futurists, technocrats, and savvy managers
who square off a percentage of reality and name their price.
1967
Renovating
I can tell you what I need is a good periodontist:
my gums are so sensitive, separated and lumpy,
I have to let my cornflakes sit and wilt:
the niacin leaks out before I get it in
5and the ten percent daily requirement of iron
rusts: I’ve got so mashed potatoes best
accommodate my desire: my gums
before them
relax and, as it were, smile: I have bad dreams that
10snap, crackle, and pop (to switch seeds)
have built an invisible wall soggy-resistant: what
I could use with my gum line
is like a new start
or at least a professionally directed reversal or
15arrest of what has become abrupt recession.
1967
Devising