The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1

by A. R. Ammons

  95

  of maple leaves, shaking loose in wind-defined drifts

  1130of elm seed, take on configuration of motion and spiel

  out into spelling: the few drops of rain have put a fizz

  on the street and the cars go by in splitting noticeability:

  I just finished planting the pole beans, the zucchini and

  cucumbers and transplanted the pepper plants, asters, and

  1135petunias: I had the best time: and after the first shower,

  the catbird lit on the top bar of the jungle gym and ripped

  off a few bars, as if a surprise announcement: but I know

  where that bird’s nest is and how quiet it’s been around

  there this month: I like to think the bird just went

  1140out of his mind with all the rising and fell afloat of it

  96

  with a singing: that’s the way I do it when I do, and I

  know the bird’s meaning at least in coming to my own: all

  the greens, a company of differences, radiant, the source

  sunk, the mellowing left-over light suffusing: I thought

  1145I saw a piece of red paper in the grass but it was a

  cardinal: and I thought I saw a clump of quince blossoms

  move but that was a cardinal: one morning three orioles

  were in the green-red quince bush: that was what it was:

  the pear tree looks like lime sherbet with whipped cream

  1150topping: the bottom part all leaves and no blossoms and

  the top part all blossoms and no leaves: a green sailboat

  or a spring mountain, from tree-green to conic, glacial white:

  97

  the work of the staying mind is to burn up or dissolve the day’s

  images, the surface falling of pear petals or of hailstones

  1155from the blue bottoms of thunderheads at sea, the curling up and

  vanishing or the plopping and melting: for the mind, large as its

  surface is, hasn’t room for the spreading out of each day’s

  images to the hard edges: so the subterranean fires of the mind

  float upward into the day’s business and here and there like

  1160volcanoes burn through into dream meldings, the hard

  edges turning inward then moving out assuming their own

  foliages and lineations, essentialized: the white hot mouth spewing

  up islands recovered to the conscious mind: in this way all the

  sensory bits are made available in symbolical assimilations ready to

  98

  1165train the mind through its surprises and commonplaces: I am

  waiting for the evening star to appear in the windowpane but

  the sun’s still a ruddy burnishing fire in the lower branches of the

  tamarack: this afternoon I thought Jove had come to get me: I walked

  into a corridor of sunlight swimming showering with turning shoals

  1170of drift pollen and not yet knowing it was pollen thought perhaps I

  was being taken or beamed aboard but saw over the roof the high

  swags

  of the blue spruce swaying and felt stabilized from wonder:

  I would still rather beget (though I can’t, apparently) than be

  begotten upon, I think I’m almost sure, but I don’t know that a vague

  1175coming of a shimmery gold floating would be so bad: I sneezed: my

  eyes watered: the intimacy was sufficient: nothing is separate:

  99

  there’s the evening star and two jets blazing sunlit vapor trails:

  stentorian: tendentious: sonorous: orotund: the moon’s up:

  however provisional the procedure, tentative the thought, the

  1180days clang shut with bronze finality: days wherein we wavered

  studiously with uncertainty, went this way a way and that way a

  way, thought twice, take on the hard and fast aspect of the

  finished, the concluded fact, thus misrepresenting us: and then

  there is at the end the stone that makes it all look purposeful

  1185and deliberate, what was hesitation, gaping, and wondrous

  turning around: life takes on the cast of decision and seeds

  the ground with marmoreal memento: stone outcroppings in the

  pasture like sheep resting: I’m glad the emphasis these days

  100

  is off dying beautifully and more on a light-minded living with

  1190the real things—soap, spray-ons, soda, paper towels, etc.—for

  indelicacy taints taking oneself too seriously and saving life

  up to close with a serene finish: I expect to die in terror:

  my mother did: old songs (hymns) erupted from her dying

  imaginations: they say she sang them blurred for two nights

  1195before the interval of clearing that preceded her majestic

  drawing away: my father’s heart burst finally and he coasted

  off, a cool drifting out of course: these destinations we

  think we do not wish to attain: unsettling flurries and

  disconnections, hurries and worries, strictures and

  1200besiegings like preparations for camping out: driven, I go

  101

  into high and drive as fast as I can: driving faster than

  I’m driven I can keep the forces aligned and taut but if

  a holiday comes along and I try to slow down for vacation,

  I swerve a lot, meander and hassle, my driver drives over

  1205my driving, an overdrive taken over by overtaking, hopeless,

  hapless helplessness: better trim the quince bush now before

  the thorns of new growth harden: or come fall there’ll be a

  further periphery-thicket of spines: maybe one isn’t supposed

  to trim while the shoots are still purplish and tender:

  1210doing it now may bleed and depress the bush to death: but

  meanwhile, while doing it, I find the placid quince rage

  enticing: by now the old periphery of blossom and nub-green

  102

  quince is inward in an exceeded stratum: even though the bush

  has put on the strain of blossoming and fruiting, it has

  1215at the same time shot out shoots all over, threatening the

  upcoming hollyhock and lemon lilies: a green rage to possess,

  make and take room: to dominate, shade out, whiten: I

  identify with the bush’s rage, its quiet, ruthless, outward

  thrust: whatever nears me must shrink, wither up, or widen

  1220overlarge and thin with shade, ambition the size of the room

  I need to unfold into: but cunning and deviousness are at

  work at the quince bush: morning glory stock is underground,

  ready to shoot up a spear of leaving through the quince’s

  underbrush and by fast moving to overcrown the bush tops

  103

  1225and take the light away: look at the smooth-cut lawn, how

  even and gentle: but finger through the turf, the nap,

  and there are the brown twists of clover, veronica, plantain,

  grass in a striving: it is hard to stand up crowding full

  into a full unfolding: being’s terror: I wonder if we

  1230should pick the gems out of the reliquary crowns and

  give to the poor, boons and munificences showering, plenty

  of meat, wines medicinal, soothing beer, classic pretzels:

  I wonder if we should shave the gold from the gold reliquary

  beards and cast it to flurries of gleaning: or melt down

  1235the artful forms, float off the dross, and mold the gold

  or stamp it into guinea suns: then the poor could have

  104

  their operations, pay off their loans, and thrive with comfort:

&n
bsp; the babies could get fresh milk and the lovers could propose:

  (but if we demolish the past’s imposing achievements, hold

  1240away only the lyre upon which we can plink immediacy): scared

  sacred: how dark it gets before the hail starts! lightning

  fries in quick crisps, thunder splits and cleaves open into

  booming crumbling walls that jar the ground: then the perfect

  ice spheres from the high world come down in a bounding

  1245rustle, some remnants of thunder far along the periphery

  grumbling: lightning strikes close and lightbulbs sear

  in their sockets and flick out: then the heavy rain brushes

  in on wind gusts at the windows: a drenching too demonstrable

  105

  for poppies, all twenty-eight heads half-closed with bending

  1250over and drooping: for a long time the eaves-gutter,

  lightening, keeps a mesh of seed-ice, the milky cores:

  because of the holdings of its many needlepoints, every one

  drop-bulbed, the long shags of the blue spruce lie into one

  another like shoals of high moss and a weatherless shower

  1255ticks on for hours after rain: slowly the boughs lighten,

  loosen, jar and sprinkle apart: a thousand acres of those

  trees could suspend a shower and turn it into an all-day

  soak: that would be good for the brooks whereby the rocks

  had refused all but a wetting: mediations soften the

  1260extremities without changing their quantities, merely

  106

  translating times: getting to know your philosophy, finely

  rational and small, is like coming into a city and finding

  a trellis, precise, consistent, which after all only holds

  up a bush: some people when they get up in the morning see

  1265the kitchen sink, but I look out and see the windy rivers

  of the Lord in the treetops: you have your identity when

  you find out not what you can keep your mind on but what

  you can’t keep your mind off: mind, many sided, globe-like,

  rich with specification and contrariety, is secure from

  1270slogans, fads, starved truths, and propaganda—defeats itself,

  meanwhile shoring itself up with sight and insight: how to

  devise a means that assimilates small inspirations into a

  107

  large space, network, reticulation complex (almost misleading)

  but moved forward by a controlling motion, design, symmetry,

  1275suasion, so that harmony can be recognized in the highest

  ambience of diversity: in a single day, one may “hear” a small

  connection, an interesting phrase, but to what can each day’s

  stock be added: what is the measure to accommodate the

  diverse impressions, moods, intuitions: in the right scope

  1280any fragment fits: since we can’t, apparently, have whole

  motions of mind through the higher reaches (sufficiently

  impregnated with the concrete), we turn to the unit to

  represent the universal: but while we can hope to arrive at

  the definition of essence through the unit, we can never in

  108

  1285that way satisfy the other capacity of the mind to achieve

  definition by ordered accumulations, massive suasions: if

  nothing shaped stays and shapelessness is dwellingless, where

  can we dwell: as shapes (bodies) we dwell only in the flow

  of shapes, turning the arcs of mortality: but the imagination,

  1290though bodiless, is shaped (being the memory or imagined

  memory of shapes) and so can dwell in nothingness: the human

  being is as inscrutable and unformulable as a poem, or, if

  possible, more so: the gas station attendant has a bottomless

  well in him, too—shoots from his brain down his spine, breaks

  1295into incredible ramification, the same as bottomless: we

  have our definitions, imperfect, but all we have: around them,

  109

  though, and running through, and immensely more vast, the

  indefinable, the source of possibility: acme came: speaking

  with “the flower of the mind” gets pollen up my nose: how

  1300to give up the life of words for life: just now (June 6 in

  the dusk) only a few dozen flowers are left on the honeysuckle

  bush, the flowers like the pink, sprung mouths of tiny vipers:

  thunder shakes pennies out of stack: if one follows the western

  littoral of Africa northward, one moves up past Walvis Bay

  1305to Sorris Sorris and, rounding out westward and turning back

  in again, to Benguela and Lobito and then way on up, swerving

  out again slightly westward, to Port Gentil and then sharply

  west to Cape Palmas and on up and around to Sidi Ifni and

  110

  past the gaping Strait and on up past Oporto and, crossing

  1310water, to Brest and then through certain colder finaglings

  one turns into the other side of the world along Siberian

  shores to the Bering Strait and, switching, descends along

  the western littoral of North America: if all else fails,

  try hocus-pocus to bring your writing into focus: for sun,

  1315moon are out of joint until you bring them to a point: cry

  Muse! and if you cannot reach her, bleed some juice from a

  writing teacher: bad images are bad but what is worse is

  verse loose where it should be terse: verse would be, except

  for magic, dull as life and twice as tragic: the shortest

  1320route to adulation is to skirt your education: in need to be

  111

  diminished, I sought out peaks and stars and at my cost

  sang them high and bright: you don’t have to be superhuman

  to survive—let go and let your humanity rise to its natural

  height, said the star, and you will in that smallness be as

  1325great as I: so I sat down and sang and mountains fell and

  at last I knew my measurable self immeasurable: the weak

  rigs a universe against himself, then overstrives to keep

  himself—but nothing is set up, nobody cares, it’s all right

  for him to come out, shine a little and love his light:

  1330aspirations (misdirections) move in the upper branches of

  the mind like vine vipers, slender, loopy, slithery:

  notice the highest cranes reach into the deepest pits:

  112

  therefore, if my slat-steel triangulations of abstraction

  and strict cables surprise and dismay you on the landscape,

  1335think how from under the foundations the waters of life

  may rise to meld with mirrors and wave the cranes away:

  think of that: for such the elegance of my uprisings: what

  is deep to come to, being overlaid with too much stone of

  fear, suggests high drills: the little red squirrel dashes

  1340out onto the thin branches, picks a maple seed, and dashes

  back to the cover of bigger branches: nibbles out the

  greenmeal seed then drops the wing into asymmetrical flutters,

  not the nosewing-spin of the true event: semblance with no

  journey: terrors bluster with undercutting sweeps, or pelt

  113

  1345with staying fragmentation (hail on the spring garden) through

  or in the mind, the swirlings of imbalanced loops between

  highs and lows, just like weather predictions and actual

  storms over average landscapes: one terror mind brings on

  itself is that anything can b
e made of anything: if there are

  1350no boundaries that hold firm, everything can be ground into

  everything else: the mind making things up, making nothing

  of what things are made of: scary to those who need prisons,

  liberating to those already in: that this dismissal is

  possible, no more recalcitrance within or without, slides our

  1355surfaces and disturbs our deeps: the poppies are all gone:

  the tulips were all gone last week: we have lemon lilies now,

  114

  some iris, some spirea still white where it’s mostly brown: we

  have four hills of mound-building ants: two hills are on the

  lawn and regularly get their hills sliced off: one hill is

  1360under the four-legged merry-go-round: I have to clip under

  there so I leave it alone: one mound is just between the

  blacktop and shrubs, on a slight incline, so it’s safe from

  the lawnmower: I notice the ants have two primary visible

  duties: some ants bring little dried bits, castings from maple

  1365bloom, dried strips of grass, even green clover leaves and deposit

  them on top of the mound: meanwhile, other ants bring up pellets

  of soil, and a weaving betwixt them takes place which the rain,

  short of destroying, glues and seals: they are interesting ants: