The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1

by A. R. Ammons

I can tell you what I need is

  money and I don’t mean

  a few thousand piddling shares of Standard Oil or

  Xerox or a chunk

  5of some up-and-coming (now over-the-counter) computer or

  computer component stock:

  what I need is a kind of expansive diversification

  with exploding international implications,

  pools, banks, and, in a figure, shoals

  10of residual and seminal coin: what I need

  to do is adopt a couple of ministates

  and then enforce upon the populace the duty

  of eating walnuts (which I’d ship in or

  aid in the local growth of) and then

  15the populace would be free

  to do anything else it chose before or after or

  even while eating walnuts

  and then I’d return the fleet (or

  else move myself to a ministate)

  20to bring the shells back for my fireplace:

  I like a nice walnut-shell fire

  on a coolish autumn night.

  1968

  Emplacement

  I can tell you what I need is

  a stronger assortment of battleboasts:

  I mean I need visions of toothy monsters

  so old greens rot their sludgy toes

  5so that meeting such visions (and, indeed,

  apparently they cannot be avoided) I could

  fetch myself up

  on a blood-lilting flinching flight of battleboasts:

  for I perceive the great work to be done is

  10too often mismangled in committee, so lacks

  all identity, all measuring out into

  salient, songster-mongered cherishing:

  what I need is for somebody to first of all

  point me out a monster and then

  15loosen a word-hoard or two jacking

  my spine up to the duty for

  to tell the truth my imagination’s sometimes

  as pale as my spine’s always yellow.

  1968

  Touching Down

  Body keeps talking under the mind

  keeps bringing up lesser views

  keeps insisting

  but coaxingly in pale tones

  5that the mind come on back, try

  to get some rest,

  allow itself to

  be consoled

  by slighter rather than slackened

  10thirst: body keeps with light touch

  though darkening

  lines sketching

  images of its mortality but not

  to startle the mind further off

  15hums

  all right all right

  1968

  Spring Coming

  The caryophyllaceae

  like a scroungy

  frost are

  rising through the lawn:

  5many-fingered as leggy

  copepods:

  a suggestive delicacy,

  lacework, like

  the scent of wild plum

  10thickets:

  also the grackles

  with their incredible

  vertical, horizontal,

  reversible

  15tails have arrived:

  such nice machines.

  1968

  Ocean City

  Island-end here is

  elongated as a

  porpoise’s nose, all

  lawns and houses

  5except one spot

  where bending property lines have

  turned out odd,

  giving this plot

  the sanctuary of contention—

  10bayberry, wild

  cherry, plum thicket:

  a shore hawk

  knows the spot,

  knows grackles, sparrows,

  15cardinals, even

  mockingbirds cluster here:

  he drops by &

  right here in town

  some early mornings wilderness

  20meets wilderness

  in a perfect stare.

  1968 (1968)

  Chasm

  Put

  your

  self

  out

  and

  you’re

  not

  quite

  5

  up

  to

  it

  or

  all

  in

  1968

  Bearing Mercy

  I spent with her

  a

  merciful night of

  lubes &

  5loblollies,

  of goings out

  & in &

  by & through:

  I held her

  10in the teeth of my

  need:

  I turned her round

  smartly

  like a fumbled

  15beachball: in

  the morning she

  got up

  & her tiny hand

  touched her

  20hair, day’s

  first flower.

  1968

  Tossup

  This wall interrupts the wind:

  sand falls out:

  bushes loft vines

  & mockingbird &

  5caterpillar have their ways:

  is this wall anything more than

  an interruption:

  nothing outlasts the last things

  across the surfaces of Nothing:

  10okay I said

  I believe in faith,

  this soft determination,

  this blasted wall.

  1968

  Plexus

  The knot in my gut’s

  my good center:

  I can trim

  off fume & froth,

  5glob & dollop,

  come in there and

  be

  hard as indivisible:

  or trusting

  10the locked twist

  float off office

  buildings of glassy

  mind,

  confident if they

  15don’t land they’ll

  circle back some day.

  1968

  Three

  The floodcrest of afternoon passes:

  the blood smooths:

  they say a roar’s in the world:

  here nothing is loud or incomplete:

  5the yellow iris with a fabulous surrender

  has flopped triple-open, available:

  sheaves of pointed fingers,

  clusters of new holly leaves assume

  the air: the redwinged blackbird’s

  10jeer’s aboriginally whole in the

  thicket across the street: if nothing’s

  broken, then I’m alone for sure.

  1968

  Miss

  Wonder if

  you’re gross

  consider the cosmic

  particle so scant

  5it can splink all

  the way through

  Cheops

  nicking nothing

  1968

  Celestial

  The most beautiful, haunting

  dusk scenes around here, clumps of

  tidal-marsh reeds on a highway’s edge

  with supple dark-green

  5cedar and tough bayberry and such

  full of widges, mean

  and manyful, opaque with invisibility:

  nature turns so wide it can afford to

  spoil an interweaving of scapes or

  10flashing an Icarus by endanger the minds

  of several listening millions whose

  creation was superb if not special.

  1968

  Correction

  The burdens of the world

  on my back

  lighten the world

  not a whit while

  5removing them greatly

  decreases my specific

  gravity

  1968

&nb
sp; Mirrorment

  Birds are flowers flying

  and flowers perched birds.

  1968

  Coming To

  Like a steel drum

  cast at sea

  my days,

  banged and dented

  5by a found shore of

  ineradicable realities,

  sandsunk, finally, gaping,

  rustsunk in

  compass grass

  1968

  Even

  Complexity o’erwhelms the gist,

  engravities the grist and grits up

  the anflob of the flubile:

  hurts:

  5nabs the numbance, fritters the foamost,

  fractures the raptors and

  rippling rislings:

  finding a nut to fit a

  bolt is an undertaking.

  1968

  Windy Trees

  You’d be surprised how short the roads

  in the air are today:

  they twist, drop, burst, and climb:

  such roads the sparrows have trouble on:

  5in fact the only thing flying around

  here today’s the grackle and he

  goes over the brush so low looks as if

  he’s beating something up from hiding:

  it’s just like reality,

  10the very day you can’t get out to fly

  there’s also no place comfortable to sit.

  1968

  Photosynthesis

  The sun’s wind

  blows the fire

  green, sails the

  chloroplasts,

  5lifts banks, bogs,

  boughs into flame:

  the green ash of

  yellow loss.

  1968

  Making Waves

  Some mornings of maximal

  frustration—wind,

  rain four days old—

  your hate waves rise &

  5slap around the walls:

  I float, smile, above the

  unadmitted show:

  but soon, bobbing, send a few

  waves out myself and

  10the two sets

  sloshing against each other

  agitate the environment

  or coming into beat

  raise waves so big we both

  15get scared and hussle out the

  oilslicks of consolation.

  1968

  Clearing

  It’s day again, the fourth day,

  still overcast and sprinkling:

  but the wind’s stopped:

  the trees and bushes in

  5profound rest

  hold beads:

  occasionally a bead drops and a

  spur of leaves springs upright:

  if the sun breaks out an

  10amazing number of things will change.

  1968

  The Account

  The difference, finding the

  difference: earth, no heavier

  with me here, will be no

  lighter when I’m gone: sum or

  5subtraction equals zero: no

  change—not to the loss of a

  single electron’s spin—will

  net from my total change:

  is that horror or opportunity:

  10should I spurn earth now with

  mind, toss my own indifference

  to indifference, invent some

  other scale that assents to

  temporary weight, make something

  15substanceless as love earth can’t

  get to with changeless changing:

  will my electrical system noumenally

  at the last moment leap free

  and, weightless, will it

  20have any way to deal—or if

  there is some thinnest weight,

  what will it join with, how

  will it neighbor: something finer

  than perception, a difference

  25so opposite to ground it will

  have no mass, indifferent to mass.

  1968

  Winter Saint

  In the summer I live so

  close to my neighbor I

  can hear him sweat:

  all my forced bushes, leafy

  5and birdy, do not

  prevent this:

  his drawers wrenched

  off his sticky butt

  clutch my speech white:

  10his beery mouth wakes up

  under my tongue: his

  lawnmower wilts my cereal:

  I do not like to hear him

  wheeze over difficult weeds:

  15I don’t like his squishy toes:

  I’m for ice and shutters

  and the miles and miles

  winter clears between us.

  1968

  The Imagined Land

  I want a squirrel-foil for my martin pole

  I want to perturb some laws of balance

  I want to create unnatural conditions

  I want to eliminate snakes, rats,

  5cats, martens from dread

  I want above the sloping foil regions of

  exceptional deliverance

  I want my evening air trimmed bug clear

  (pits of bottomless change

  10shot through the clarifying ambience)

  I want design heightened into

  artificial imbalances of calm

  I want a squirrel-foil for my martin pole

  1968

  The King of Ice

  Now and then the intolerable crooks

  down around my temples

  and binds—an ice-vice, you could

  say, vice-ice—a crown of ice:

  5kings know how to take matters

  casually, so I just sit there cold,

  intensely inward, brow bowed,

  loneliness universal: I wait:

  I’m not going anywhere: I

  10wait for the thing to slip or for

  my attention to fix, somewhere on

  the inner glacier, on polar bears

  in disconcerting romp: I figure

  the intolerable not to be dealt with,

  15just set aside: I am going to

  wait: look at these interesting

  stitches in my robes, I say:

  I’ve already settled my affairs of state;

  that is, I’ll take the cold when it comes,

  20but I will never believe in ice.

  1968

  Village, Town, City—Highway, Road, Path

  Grove, forest, jungle—a thickening motion

  accompanied by a sense of loss of control:

  swamp: ah, an uncertain or sloppy (hungry) bottom:

  flood moccasins lining the bayous, drowning snakes

  5rafting down the gulf-wide river: patch, copse,

  thicket—a surrounding tameness with a touch of

  central wilderness: let a dog belch up worms—

  they string from his mouth in a white beard,

  his eyes grave, tamed, shamed to affliction:

  10but affliction can storm from shame and

  tussle the peripheries of order: but take a word,

  there are backward suasions: you may have twice

  as much of anything as you ask: my yard maple’s

  in the open, full of leaf, and single to the wind.

  1969

  Lonely Splendor

  I tell the maple it’s unwise—though

  it stands open

  and alone—to put too much splendor

  of leaf on

  5so that rather than stand firm and quiver

  to the wind it rolls

  raising whole branches on a swell

  that plays out into tossing and twisting

  at the top:

  10but, of course, it is

  difficult to tell

  the inner thrust it can’t ornament the whole

  open universe, such quenchless

  putting out and on:
r />   15I tell the maple, if a wind’s taken by

  the bounty of your heavy ship,

  what may be assumed, what saved:

  if I were a maple I’d want neighbors

  to keep me skinny and high

  20in windbreaking thickets:

  but then loneliness can’t be cajoled

  to give a leaf up

  (or keep one in)

  and can’t believe slim thickets

  25do any slender speaking worthy note.

  1969

  The Swan Ritual

  Yield to the tantalizing mechanism:

  fall, trusting and centered as a

  drive, following into the poem:

  line by line pile entanglements on,

  5arrive willfully in the deepest

  fix: then, the thing done, turn

  round in the mazy terror and

  question, outsmart the mechanism:

  find the glide over-reaching or

  10dismissing—halter it into

  a going concern so the wing

  muscles at the neck’s base work

  urgency’s compression and

  openness breaks out lofting

  15you beyond all binds and terminals.

  1969

  He Said

  Speaking to mountains (&

  hearing them speak!) assiduously

  (though encounteringly)

  avoids the personal,

  5a curvature whose swerve, however,

  can out-range the scary planets

  and seriously attenuate

  the gravitational

  core which wanting the personal

  10had to give it up:

  being can’t always be as it is:

  volcanoes, droughts, quakes,

  natural disasters of all kinds,

  including (heavy rain &)

  15the personal,

  mitigate much fixity, the dwelling