by A. R. Ammons
the mind orange, blue with
85desolation’s mold, something
thin & high
cuts through whatever is
and makes no difference of difference:
my mouth, become eyes, weeps
90words: words spill
into
hyacinths: for my acquaintance
with grief is
intimate, lost voices my credentials:
95singing’s been sung: the same
body is crying:
fatigues snagged by wire,
bodies sag in their buttons, collars
flutter, surf jogs, the wind
100all outside and usual:
blue dusk fills up under the gold smoke:
the sky violates nothing to intercede:
I held her
by the rose and
105intruded: the petals
slickened, silken: I shaved
my head &
offered it there:
O rose
110the microflora along your hinder walls
are fast bloomers: tunnel-scapes
beady with stiff
moss: who keeps the saltsea keeps
its plankton, not reasonable?
115microflora, reproducing, don’t mind
the long glider that
coming shoulders out the wind to
fundamental suction: collapsible
I live with
120spherical walls:
everyway I look leaning in, leaning in’s
the style &
passing over: I pick pockets of
perse pansies, poesies, posepays,
125powder palls & wary:
I had a little pony:
his name was Dapple Gray:
and every time I had him,
he tried to get away:
130who will eat from such a garden
let him have an oedipal situation
and my rights and privileges:
that the triadic Hegel could have been
evidencing his
135genitals is a notion of
such cracking solemnity
birds fail to fly:
some are spring harvests: today,
April Fools’, a squirrel in the leafless
140elm gathered torn bark and inner tissue
from dead branches, wadding them
into her mouth then going limb by
thinning limb to leap onto the heavy
electric wire, then going upstreet to my
145neighbor’s streetside spruce: I
think that’s
where the nest will be:
waste assimilated into
use: the result a neatness
150unpremeditated, a re-ingestion of
process:
so arranged it is that my wasted
life becomes words
that through complexity and
155unstructured swirl
seek the fall-out of
comparable enhancements:
occurrences
recognitions
160surroundings
tensions sprung free
into events
happenstance & necessity
prediction & surprise
165moment & forever
and the gloomy, oh the melancholy,
remorseful
falling back and away
of time-sunk persons and places,
170ragged knots
of a grounded, celestial kite:
yesterday robins
on the dark edge of dusk sang like
peepers:
175I went out to listen
and they were robins:
and on the cold edge of spring
though on a warm day
we went out into the woods for
180hepaticas up
along Six Mile Creek: we
found one spring-beauty and
by sun-warmed logs
a few clusters of hepatica,
185hundreds of plants
but few bloomers: the
backfall of creekwater was
interesting, countercaps, and
compensating, the up-creek water
190along eddying banks:
peripheries:
the dance about the fire,
utterance of tongues,
parlance of feet:
195griefs can’t be removed,
only altered, caught up into the
timed motions
of bearable sway:
fall in love with yourself
200where it’s shallow:
don’t
thwart shriveling up by
suddenly drowning:
if change is certain, as say so many,
205certainty is where there isn’t any:
pop gun
soda pop
pop art
popsicle
210mom & pop
popinjay
pop in
popeyed
population
215I can’t get that star carted I said:
flooded carburetor, cracked voltage
regulator: I didn’t realize at once
it was apt: a Starchief: and
one day a man said looking at
220the dash word, it has
your name in it: Starchief: he
was a good abstractor:
I had a little pony:
his name was Dapple Gray:
225and when I tried to trim him,
he had a lot to bray:
an inch of snow last night but
mid morning is bright and melting:
the shadows are white:
230napalm isn’t falling here:
so what is it:
first, an explosion near the ground:
then a tarry rain,
soft and afire, falls, crumbles, & sticks:
235sticks to trees, houses, children,
things like that: if
it hits it’s 94.3% effective:
I see my death, my horror, the radical,
real, senseless pain,
240as a coming afloat,
rocking in a mastery of oceans:
what time caricatures should
time keep:
to those busy making themselves
245great, with grave music and
solemn looks, a thorough using up and
setting forth of language’s materials,
I send
empty statements, slip-shoddiness,
250incredible breeziness and such:
the wind we go to
understands everything:
I sing, though, in a way, the best I can,
for I may be understood
255where I do not understand:
around the aureola matters get touchy:
confusion erodes the ice-glass
steel office buildings of rationality:
anti-rationality only makes another
260kind of thrust: complexity
blurs the sleek towers, wilts the
phallus of mistaken direction:
welcome to your unattended,
coin-operated, do-it-yourself
265laundry:
bring and use your favorite bleach,
soap, and starch: if
machine is
defective, please use another machine:
270to start washer put money in coin meter
and
(1) if slide type meter—slowly push
slide all the way in: then slowly
pull slide all the way out:
275(2) if rotary knob type meter—
turn knob:
tub
will start filling not later than ½
minute after operating coin slide:
280 stopcock
cock & bull
ears cocked
cocktail
peacock
285cockle
cockney
; cockiness
cockscomb
poppycock
290cockeyed
cockroach
cockpit
cocksure
dryclean wash ’n wears, even cotton
295items: use this
handy clothing guide: follow
these simple steps:
brush away loose lint
and other soiling matter: turn sweaters
300inside out: turn down cuffs of
trousers: insert the
necessary coins:
rubbers, after several drycleanings,
tend to lose elasticity: plastic-coated
305fabrics often become stiff:
beware sequins, beads, and other fragile
ornaments, can get you into trouble:
remove wear wrinkles and sharpen creases
and pleats: some spots refuse
310to come out, rust, mildew, dried paint,
indelible ink:
little artery, couple inches long,
branching into cardiac muscle: it pops
and you give up philosophy and
315ultimate concern, car payments, son and wife,
you give up the majors & minors,
the way you like your egg cooked, your
class ring, lawn,
sparrows nesting in the garage, the
320four crocus bulbs (maybe more next
year), toenails and fillings:
I wouldn’t want to happen up on any
critters of eternity, absolutes that
end the world: fellow said one star
325up there in our galaxy is mostly
gadolinium, a rare earth;
nobody knows how the concentration occurred:
then there are other surpluses and
scarcities
330that uneven the tissue:
I wouldn’t want anything
to get known tight: ignorance is our
boat giving us motion: or, capsized,
knowledge is our ark which is more in
335line with the tradition:
the ocean would then
be what it
is:
spirit, though
340it encompasseth mightiness, etc., however,
cannot, like a motor,
raise and lower
toast:
nothing matters, believe me, except
345everything: to sift & sort, magnify
& diminish, admit & renounce, impairs
the event:
what the mind can’t accept’s obscene:
the rest shines with an
350additional, redeeming
light,
the light in the head
of language in motion:
the wave coming in, running, gathers,
355lofts, curls—the instant of
motion’s maximum
organization: then: then one is
forty & hollow: the curl’s reach
redeems the hollow, equals it, till
360the curl touches over: what is the
use: the crashing, the hollow coming
topside into wide prevalence,
the flat waters skinnying out and
rushing back—is merely endurance
365until the next wave lifts:
as for what’s left,
dip it and ship it: to have made
it here is not to have it made:
entering is lovely:
370such delicacies, scents, the
feminine source, perfumes: cookies
in the oven, delights:
mixmaster, maxmister,
mast me a mix, ur,
375mix me a mist, ur . . .
the mixers and blenders chew up
differences: chomp & whirl
to knotless paste: the spurt for
equilibrium:
380to compensate for which somewhere root,
bark, leaf must make a walnut, some
skinny saint rail through the cosmos,
shot from earth by penury and dread:
what is more costly or
385needed than a mind shot to space by
shiny thrust, a renunciation of
earth, a negative blast away:
I have seen all the way in with
a white bang that they
390are spheres, round solids, sprinkled,
lightly, in a medium, not
empty, called space and that
these round bodies go round
different orders of center
395that swoosh away burning
their peripheries and sucking
their centers through virgin space, neither
up nor
down—the
400terror that that is
the way it is,
that particular way, a
pure flower of terror:
ancient souls sitting on
405the bright banks of forever
in
raptures of old acquaintance: for every
never again,
an always again: and young souls
410from their quick missing
quick as branches and glittering:
where the lost remains, immortal in
the foreverness of the lost:
say good morning, say buon giorno,
415say hi
to infant brother, to mother, father,
sit down under the golden pines on
the slopes of no further parting:
the Buddhist nun burns for the peace
420her ashes will achieve:
the village woman coming home finds
her shack afire, her
son & husband shot: she bends down
where she is:
425she is given tokens of the dead but
her left arm like a sickle reaps at the
air
for the harvest
already taken:
430through the reeds somewhere, as by a
paddy or ditch in her head,
wind burrs
a leaf: the woman flutters,
her grief absolute and
435not a mystery:
how can I know I
am not
trying to know my way into feeling
as
440feeling
tries to feel its way into knowing:
it’s
indifferent what I say: the motions
by which
445I move
manifest
merely a deeper congruence
where the structures are:
run my poem through your life and
450exist, decommissioned,
like rubble,
innocent, slouchy on the uptake:
the scramblers, grabbers, builders—
rubblerousers: sticking stone to
455false stone in a unity of walls which
wants to come apart: let
weeds and grasses move in among a
scattering, make a little shade, hide
mice, give burrows to ground bees,
460byway hideouts to the engines of spiders,
stones the
owl can come and sit in moonlight on:
we
should all be in a shambles, shacked up,
465peeping round the grasshoppers,
preserving a respectful quiet:
don’t snatch & grab: grab snatch:
laboratory tests attest,
when a system of two bodies
470charges and discharges itself
it’s peaceful as tulips:
can a 41-year-old man living on dandelion leaves
from the cool edges of junkyards
find
475songlore enough
in the holocausts, boggy garbage,
fly swarms, lamb bones, and rust-floral
cans
of his weedy search
480to sustain interest:
&nbs
p; the continuum, one
and visionless, within
which
the breakdown of pure forms,
485arising of skyscrapers, laws,
the high crystal-clear arising
of theory:
the evening blue-purple, the trees
black,
490the birds can’t quit singing: damp
heat built
and rose through the golden towered afternoon,
broke finally into motion, as of
descent, rain beating
495straight down
between racks of thunder:
can anything be erased: can this day’s
praising hold to the day it praises
down the slopes of total entropy:
500pray without ceasing:
we found hailstones in the grass
and ate them to cool:
spurred stones
with interior milkwhite halos,
505an arrested spangling:
the high hard water
melted
aching our tongues.
1967 (1973)
THE SNOW POEMS (1977)
for my country
Words of Comfort
Words of comfort,
a railing before the fray,
mumbling shock
away from seizure, between mts
5a drone, narrative, longer wind runs
than mourning, going on over
past the waters of
every expense of care
can modes, syntaxes, rhetorics,
10folkways compete
with equanil (I think not)
to put you away) to sleep
(contemporary verse excepted)
(pick up this week’s
15feelings at your local drugstore)
today misty drizzling (around seventy)
the pleasant pheasant
disappear
drippy-humble
20into the shrubs and few
birds bother: crows emphatically find dead
trees to sit in,
skinned branches, line up
into the wind,
25a black countercurrent
drippy but cool
get a poem big enough
ocean-sea rivers
stream around it
30by the time
a poem is the world
the author is
out of town
pushing fifty—
35those years you waited to fill out, you