The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1

by A. R. Ammons

truest telling:

  10while we carry it,

  we’re the whole

  reading out of consequence:

  history is a blank.

  (1973)

  Self-Projection

  The driest place in the yard’s

  under the faucet:

  where there is hose,

  length will move

  5the source away

  from its own critical drought:

  hesitate and

  undo: unscrew

  and turn the undisciplined faucet

  10on: what more than the self

  sometimes needs the self.

  1968 (1972)

  Outside-the-Household Hint

  When picking

  pears

  off a hanging

  pear-limb

  5start picking at

  your highest

  reach

  and then pick

  down into

  10the limb’s rise:

  if you start

  picking

  from

  the bottom the

  15limb in

  rising

  will bear

  the high pears beyond

  you.

  Metaphysic

  Because I am

  here I am

  (nowhere)

  else

  1969

  Tussock

  From high

  winds the gulls

  lie low: as the self

  crouches from the

  5ragings of its

  high mind:

  hunkers down

  into all that

  silence can advise.

  (1973)

  The Make

  How I wish great poems could be written about nothing

  you know just sitting around a comet coming

  leaves falling off a bush in a cliff

  ducks flicking their tails, a driblet spray,

  5the universe turning over or inside out

  small prominences on the ocean wind-smoothed into waxen scallops

  how I wish there could be the most exciting line ever going nowhere

  or traveling making money spending it messing around

  a warp in pure space just a warp unwarping

  10a stone losing three molecules into a brook’s edge

  or the point of a leaf trying to fall off by itself

  how I wish that instead of poetic tensions there could be dreaming

  shales of mind spilling off (with a little dust rising) into deep cones

  a gathering and spinning out

  15into threads some so fine the mind rescues them with imagination

  little bits of lightning when the wind bends them through the light

  how I wish there could be such poems

  about nothing doing nothing

  1973 (1975)

  Juice

  I’m stuck with the infinity thing

  again this morning: a skinny

  inexpressible syrup, finer than light,

  everywhere present: the cobweb becoming

  5visible with dust and the tumblelint

  stalled in the corner seem worthy.

  Terminations

  Sometimes the celestial syrup slows

  into vines

  stumps, rock slopes,

  it’s amazing in fact how

  5slow it can get—diamond:

  but then sometimes it flows

  free in a flood

  and high

  so procedure drowns out

  10perception

  practically, a roof showing

  here and there

  or a branch

  bobbing:

  15as skinny

  wind it recalls

  and promises everything

  but delivers nothing

  except the song that

  20skims the mountains

  and makes no sense

  (except all sense)

  to us

  slowed discrete

  25out of following.

  (1973)

  Fundamental Constant

  The clouds,

  from what possible formations,

  nudged and shaped

  to what directions,

  5came this

  way

  and the rain, hardly breaking

  free from the

  larger motions,

  10occurred:

  I look through the window now

  to the hedge

  leaf

  unsettled by a drop

  15that quivering to fall

  blinks a prismatic

  code

  several kinds

  of change sorting

  20through eons have

  failed to change or break.

  (1973)

  Making It

  Entering the dark sounds

  all right

  if promising radical

  loss of diversion

  5and going down into

  dwelling through the dark

  that sounds okay a

  deepening into profundity

  but at the giving

  10up into the dark of the dark

  the loss of

  the sight of sightlessness

  a cry begins

  to tear

  15that tears till it tears free

  1973 (1974)

  Scope

  Getting little

  poems off (clusters

  of them) hits

  centers—if lesser centers—

  5quicker and

  set-wise like the rocks

  of kaleidoscopes

  makes infinite

  combinations possible whereas

  10the long job’s

  demand for consistency

  levels,

  though the one center it

  shoots for

  15may be deeper

  (if hit

  or if not moved away into

  disintegration

  by the fulsome carriages)

  Weight

  He loved cloud covers,

  went into woods

  to hide from stars: he

  wept under bridges,

  5noticed weeds, counted

  frog calls

  till a stone in

  his belly hardened

  against infinity, the

  10grievances of levitation.

  1965 (1976)

  Ballad

  I want to know the unity in all things and the difference

  between one thing and another

  I said to the willow

  and asked what it wanted to know: the willow said it

  5wanted to know how to get rid of the wateroak

  that was throwing it into shade every afternoon at 4 o’clock:

  that is a real problem I said I suppose

  and the willow, once started, went right on saying

  I can’t take you for a friend because while you must

  10be interested in willowness, which you could find nowhere

  better than right here,

  I’ll bet you’re just as interested in wateroakness

  which you can find in a pure form right over there,

  a pure form of evil and death to me:

  15I know I said I want to be friends with you both but the

  willow sloughed into a deep grief

  and said

  if you could just tie back some of those oak branches

  until I can get a little closer to mastering that domain

  20of space up there—see it? how empty it is

  and how full of light:

  why I said don’t I ask the wateroak if he would mind

  withholding himself until you’re more nearly even: after

  all I said you are both trees and you both need water and

  25light and space to unfold into, surely the wateroak will

  understand that commonness:

  not so you could tell
it, said the willow:

  that I said is cynical and uncooperative: what could

  you give the wateroak in return for his withholding:

  30what could I give him, said the willow, nothing

  that he hasn’t already taken:

  well, I said, but does he know about the unity in

  all things, does he understand that all things have a

  common source and end: if he could be made

  35to see that rather deeply, don’t you think he might

  give you a little way:

  no said the willow he’d be afraid I would take all:

  would you I said:

  or would you, should the need come, give him a little way

  40back:

  I would said the willow but my need is greater than

  his

  and the trade would not be fair:

  maybe not I said but let’s approach him with our powerful

  45concept that all things are in all

  and see if he will be moved

  (1973)

  Three Travelogues

  I.

  Off backwoods macadam

  swinging back at a sharp angle

  onto the sandy road

  downwoods

  5laurel in hung cloud clumps opening

  the sprung anthers

  ready to shoot loose

  multitudinous into the air

  floats of pollen

  10gazes of yellow along the pinkribbed floral bowls:

  a grouse hen

  sanding

  in sun at the road’s edge,

  not stirring, enthralled,

  15interruption

  a disbelief,

  the car’s motion safety enough

  and on along the ribbed rubbling road

  to the white small bridge

  20at the turn’s downward curve:

  got out to see,

  saw on the stream’s bank

  in full sun

  the arching fern, its

  25cinnamon

  rod lifting high, set off,

  tall and honest,

  waterbeetles swimming upstream,

  darting, “standing” in flow:

  30on the other side

  damselflies, blackwinged,

  needle bodies

  enameled, oriental green,

  at the wingtips, strutted open,

  35a white dot, star,

  the wings closed upward,

  drawn open downward four white stars,

  the lacy pumping of

  amazement and desire

  II.

  40Fell ashore in high seas,

  the blackwet, weed-slickened canes of my raft

  loosened by the surf approach:

  rose between rocks and hit ground

  beyond the sea’s way:

  45held an armful of reeds from my breaking ship:

  gleaned from swell and foam

  slack straws to keep:

  and went higher among sprayless rocks and stiff shrubs

  and rested,

  50the stars available, multitudinous, the dark

  wide, deeper than sight:

  I lived there, treasuring

  the rainpool in the scalloped rock,

  stretching my clothes to showers, gathering

  55rain,

  wringing the pool full,

  drinking from the twisted fountain:

  there I lived, preying

  on gulls’ nests,

  60splashing minnows from the runlets of caves,

  sleeping,

  the straws of my ship bedded under

  stones from the wind’s lift, dreaming,

  tomorrow wings,

  65the cautious, off-circling eyes,

  the water clear, dotless far as light

  into the tunnels of rock,

  fire’s simmering,

  a white-sailed cloud’s blue hull of rain:

  70nude, brush-burned, alone: underwater, land and

  vegetation, hostile, oily luxuriance,

  the deep, windless surges, quiet, proliferation:

  sang on the moon-bleached highest rock

  the bell-less hours of night,

  75time-starved in the plenty of time

  III.

  An interruption makes a world: descent of

  energies, failure of equilibrium: an unevenness,

  imbalance:

  in late March I went for a walk along the

  80margin of fields and woods

  (margins are places for things to happen:

  a line of difference there, disparity,

  discernible change)

  and could hardly bear the sight of the small events

  85happening in fullness, occurrences of promise or terror:

  a green flake of weed between two larger flakes,

  the dark wet ground clumpy, rising here or falling,

  weed leaf curling to crowd into the sun,

  that great body, furious and radiant, relating

  90directly to billions of events

  too common to notice or too small: wild

  plum blooming under the edge of pines,

  a hold of ground and grass

  saved along the ditchbank from the spring plow,

  95the extra green in a rye blade where a rabbit dropped

  dark pellets (leaching out and lightening

  to rain and sun): the placement

  and width of brackets on a soggy stump:

  these events:

  100I can hardly tell about them: they seem so

  worthless yet are undiminished: so independent,

  throwing back our meanings:

  and followed the ditch down the wood’s edge,

  across the bottomland field, and

  105into the woods at the other side

  and on down through the woods to where

  in the branch the small ditch-flow lost

  its separate saying: found a dry, high log, held

  from the ground by the circle of turf it turned

  110in falling, and sat down

  to see if I could take on the center of a filled out

  world but heard from another fallen tree

  a branch-trickle whose small music

  from breakage and hindrance brought the world

  115whole and full again and to itself.

  1962 (1969)

  Sight Unseen

  Take some prose and build

  fairly shabby metrical dikes

  around it, so it seems

  firm enough, if empty, like

  5scaffolding (that was an

  unintentional rhyme) and

  (also unintentional) you have

  a good representation of

  the frame (pun unintended)

  10of mind most of us prefer—

  at least, adopt: (here

  see visions of people

  like tendrils forming into

  trellises growing up into

  15(unintentional) crane-like

  triangulations, noble structures

  that attain workable loft:)

  nobody needs, apparently, or

  apparently desires monstrous

  20extrusions of energy,

  maniacal spools, jungle growths

  of ascendancy that could

  crunch the held spaces and

  finger, in wobbly failures,

  25the sky (the sky of sky and

  sky of mind): I am against

  something but I don’t know

  what: failure, a fatigue

  of the metal (or bracket loose),

  30enters into every means and

  proposition, just as some little

  success can be expected nearly

  anywhere: I have no beef:

  take a fairly unselfconscious

  35prose style, in a prosy day,

  and fail to get excited

  about its median flaws and

  flows and sort o
f relax

  into an adequate object: the

  40privileged moments confine

  their privilege to moments

  while we have to live, somehow,

  all day: well, here we are, unlost,

  advanced beyond being found:

  45there in the mirror is

  a half-engaged willingness

  to comply, an interest

  we can practically claim.

  1973 (1978)

  Facing

  I take your hand:

  I touch your

  hair, as if

  you were going away

  5to be a long time

  away, as

  you must someday go

  forever away:

  lust burns out high

  10into light: I walk

  away and back: I

  touch your hair.

  1966

  Glass Globe

  I woke up (merely) and found

  myself

  inside a bulb of pain:

  I said

  5everybody else looks all right,

  it must be mine:

  I kept it & kept it

  shined invisibly clear.

  1968 (1972)

  Separations

  Looking for clear water he

  came from murky lowlands

  to the desert and

  after high plains & higher mesas

  5saw a white mountain

  and going up into the sharp reaches

  fell down and drank melt:

  the cold water bore no

  dream: he perished,

  10swilling purity.

  1965

  Circling

  Occurrence is continuous (and in

  continuum)

  (mind

  ever making) and unmaking: the star

  5burns to the brim:

  water moves:

  motion organizes, parallel motions

  echo along

  parallels

  10and break out (or are broken out)

  to oppose

  other motions, confluences:

  the white flakes of

  rue anemone