by A. R. Ammons
midforest
and along starry pond margins
and flavors,
scents dry up, lose their stems to sources,
920where the dogs
cracking crisp
run:
cold cleanses,
brightens, thins:
925if one could save a cubic mile
of this for August!
(magazines advertise
themselves in themselves)
a year, what a year: anus mirabilis:
930what can you do: the inner ring of
relatives in trouble with
their teeth, fixing, lumbago,
running off in Dusters,
and a wider ring of relatives,
935regular mishpucha, coming up for
advice backed up with a loan,
so-and-so’s cousin’s pill
in the wrong end: what is it:
making baskets
940tonight to meet Kammen’s guest
Bailyn, the historian, such a nice
man: there were the Novarrs: they
knew Bailyn way back and Ruth calls
him Buddy, imagine, the National
945Book Award winner, Buddy, also
the Pulitzer
The Arc
The arc
of
the
950loop, the
cradle
of
sway
to be
955rocked
in the heights
(not dropped,
inert, in
earth)
960oh, to carry out the byways of
reverie
(the cedars teardrops
before impact)
(something to feel
965not just the
discursive unwinding of
feeling)
born we scream
fed we ummm and smack
970beboweled we grunt
fucked we groan
and so with death do we tussle and
groan
but why
975when in moments of importance
we hold
our tongues
do we give
significance to articulation that
980only waits the next
seizure out
oh, to be rocked in the arm
of the dwelling, to be
cuddled and cooed to,
985to whisper and sip, slur
and loll in the long
unwindings and squdgings,
the honey, the honey, oh,
the honey high,
990oh, the
air-clear, beer-lit,
oh, the bright drop,
retsyn:
eat a pig dinner sometimes and sit
995down in a deep chair that rightangles
your uplumping belly out
cuts off the avenues of circulation
and boluses of air
form promoting gastric
1000distress:
if it gets severe take a sip
of water, will dislodge
the gasball enough to ease off the
pain but then walk about
1005to re-establish the circulations
also lift your arms, your hands clasped
behind your head and
let go of your belly or heave out your
chest and meanwhile swing slowly from
1010side to side this may ease the bubble
up, also it is important to think you
may not be dying, although you will be feeling
like it, because added
tension forms another airball
1015over itself like those scared, foam-nesting
insects
good reception
fair this morning, much
warmer, over fifty, but
1020cloudy and rainy in the afternoon
with a falling off of temperature down
to where a few snowflakes flew and
so today was mostly dark and lowering
and blustery but nice
There! the Light of Human Reason!
1025There! the light of human reason!
issues from the crevasse of that black
hump of hill-line, rounds a
pastoral fallacy,
is lost behind the Dark Wood,
1030the thicket treacherous,
but reappears as two, the one
light and its dropped reflection
in the Cavity of Eternal Depth (the
dentist’s dream) which is or filled
1035with water or with a liquorish air of
consistency so the
light will not penetrate it but
throw back up into the world
but now there goes the progress
1040around that awful pit but note
the light now introduced
into a lantern, flat-sided with panels
in grapy glass, to make it
past
1045the gash of gorge that strikes
down from the hills through the earth
in a plunge the wind observes
to howl through so that none may pass
unhouseled up (long wait) but there
1050the faithful light reappears on this our
edge, the long going down into and
arising from, and proceeds onward to
meet us: the light flickers and sometimes cannot
in the whole dark scene be seen but
1055with tendance and awful looking we may
severally be reminded that reft of this
bright bit
we sink into greater toothiness and squinting
but so much for the story if
1060no end to the story’s glory (glory’s story?)
what is
matter’s project here, is it, where every
hub is afire with spinning and every
axle taking on the resonance of a
1065dissonance, where every next instant has
a twelve-ton meteorite or thousand-foot
ledge-drop in it, where everything
one once loved drains backward away into
a common hole, where underfoot one
1070feels time’s shimmy, the sludge- and
sledgeweight of gravity’s maw,
where nothing that in this fair
day takes on brilliant delimitations
and delights will miss tomorrow’s
1075indifferent spill, waste, or fill or gravid
mud
(I can hardly care a paragraph for such
fidgeting)
(when the downswoop collects us
1080will we look into the sky’s
mild mien or
back on an
earth we haven’t learned to lose)
matter
1085projects
the breeding of races crusty, to fall
asleep in calamity’s bosom, power
too self-effacing to bear its own
strength, that can be the patient nurse . . .
1090The X Press
The X Press Press
The ReXPress
bound and determined
metes and bounds sky-high
1095ground meatsmeets
Mr. Spilldiddler
Mr. Dillspiddler
rough day
stuff tough
Hard Lard
1100Hard lard hard fact
hard wind hard core
hard ball hard time
hard hard
the clouds lower low dipping almost
1105skirting skinny-brittle treetops
but drop a ground-brightening!
the snow, pleasant flakes, dry
enough to worm in the wind
before touching down
1110or brushing stopped against bush, brush,
garagedoor handle or what, even the
clothesline a skinny, longwinded catcher:
people are good for you if nothing
much ails you but if people (cruel
1115and insensitive, survival pluses) ail
you nature is a rescue, go to it,
nonpersonal, decommissioned, an
indifference big enough to cool off or
melt down
1120your differences: sometimes,
when it seems the mind will hesitate,
swell in a realization and break,
and one thinks that perhaps one may
fall down or wobble past resilience,
1125then one turns with relief to nature,
the verbal empire’s blocks, pigeonholes,
axioms, pronunciamentos, and stuff (stuffiness)
chewed up in the simplest
wind-sand design or snow flurry: oh, to
1130break through the strangling entanglements,
binds, clusters of wordy mentality and
feel the luster of woodsfloor under snow!
vitiated by arrogance, jubersome
of seriousness, my language
1135will hardly touch stumps or stump: if words
hurt me, why do I
come to them to move a saying through:
am I saying in words how I wish nature
in fact were, though impersonal: fluent,
1140yielding, showy, a dance of mind not
words (though in words) but things:
I could get something straight but
it would stop winding:
with words to make nature sound off,
1145speak up
till we find the place where it
will say nothing further,
be of no further use, an example to
no further imposition,
1150an illustration of, allegory of, nothing
so that we can achieve the podium of
inhumanity, the clearing, wherefrom
we can look back and away to the
astonishing thing, man’s rise and demise,
1155and then what, the crazy universe here,
here, here for thousands, even millions
of years, going on with purposes, if
any, not ours: room
enough for every correction of view,
1160where perspective is never sold out, utero,
utero, the
commencement before the commencement:
snow sounds like gritty pellets
on the panes:
1165I thought it was a mouse in my paperbox:
here’s a little poem I jotted down this
morning: it’s about a complete action,
ah, except for the purple do: the starlings,
having hung sideways on the music building’s
1170ivyvine collection while picking the berries,
sit meditatively high in the branches of the
oak to rest and then the berries
that had not fallen from the vines fall
from the lofts of oak, empurpling do’s
1175sparse rain:
the starlings barely
got the berries
off the vines
before snow
1180lineations loaded
them up again
once there was a maple tree: during
the summer it produced lots of
maple seed: when the leaves fell,
1185clusters and clusters of dry maple seed
were left, ruffles, hanging in the tree:
when the first snows came, squirrels
were often in the maple tree eating seeds
and, soon, most of the branches were
1190empty: one day a dog came by and startled
a squirrel as he was eating from a cluster
of seed far out on a branch: the squirrel,
leaving one seed in the cluster, stopped
eating and ran back to the trunk to go
1195up higher in the tree: but the dog went
on and the squirrel turned back to eating:
but not back to the single seed
far out on the branch: hard cold set in
one day and for weeks no squirrels came
1200out: then on a warm windy day in March,
two maple seeds, the only two left on the
tree, softened in their stems and blew
away: one seed fell on the macadam and
the tires of a car crushed it: the other
1205seed, the one the squirrel, interrupted
by the dog, had left behind, fell next to
the garage between two rosebushes: that
was the sunny side of the garage, and the
rosestocks helped hold the warmth, so the
1210seed germinated and soon was a tiny tree
with a leaf of its own: I thought, my
goodness, all the maple tree’s seeds
produced one tree, but I
couldn’t have a tree that close to
1215the garage so I pulled it up
a poem is a machine made out of worlds
a poem is made of words fed to machines
hard farthard tackI feel so much
hard warehard sellbetter on my
1220hard head hard boilfeet provided
I have something
to lean against
Hard Fist
Hard fist
hard turd
1225cool whip
soup dip
freezer queen
candy 6pack
full quart
1230good thru
strawberry preserves
boneless ham
personal butcher
save more
1235windshield washer
raisin bran
will allrarely has so much
my talkbeen said over so
not dissolvelittle unsaid
1240reticence’s pellet,
dishonorable silence’sbig wig
unwanted bead
pay attention
pay no mind
1245“up yr nose“up your dick
with a rubber hose”with a toothpick”
in yr ear
with a hornet’s rear“up yr ass
with a blade of grass”
1250many fears are born of
fatigue & loneliness
scraps from, the trash of, the verbal
environment
saved, retention’s waste, waste’s
1255retention, the scary, sublime,
heavy musk anal honey, but also
the collection, munitions
for colonic assault
save a life
1260return my dog
my brown and white
female dog was takenRecord
from the Straight
Lobby Friday Dec 5My wife, the
1265she is my closestweightlifter,
companion and I amsmiles and three
destroyed without hertons
(from a bulletin board) rise from my back
Golemon juice
1270crabmeat claws
Old ageswiss slices
getssalad shrimp
setlean roast
to sitbaking mix
1275downapple sauce
pie filling
ground chuck
minced clams
corned beef
1280the elm
also (like thein
willow) latethis
to loseour
its leavesown
1285has (likeday
the willow)and
lost themtime
arrange these words so that they make
sense
1290people, self-centered,
inconsiderate,
cheer news of a darkness darker
than theirs, a deeper gouge
into a wound more rotten:
1295least can they bear news
of a happiness close to
them
I side
a minority of myself
with the majority
1300against the majority
of myself
which is a minority
there it is
equation-tranquil
1305mesh itmake little
with life andof much
it can (almostmake much
unfailingly will)of little
breakor
1310downmake little or much
or short circuitof much
and little
I won’t weep
though:
1315the rhetoric
“make a big fuss over nothing”
is not a good poetic,
not even a
good idea,
1320not even
“make a big fuss over something”
make molehills
of mountains
8:45 A.M.—Doorbell Rings: Wife
8:45 A.M.—doorbell rings: wife
1325answers: voice says, “Good morning,
I have a chest for you.”
wife says, “Right up the stairs.”
I’m right up the stairs on the stool,
door and butt cracked; here they come:
1330conceptualization is
self-correcting (don’t worry)
and not as bad as I’ve made out, I’ve
made out: for example, imaginative
forms derive from bioforms, take the
1335maindrifts and subtleties: the big
channel moves away from the heart of
the matter directly and sizably (as
to volume) but then, moved away, begins
to correct itself
1340to the pressure
to break down, lessening in—
to distinction so as
to become available
to organs, tissues, and cells,
1345to establish deep and wide application
and relevance: but there rationality,
though at its sharpest ramification and closest
to its immediacy, commences
to break down, the mind unable
1350to bear so much division of matter
with no lessening of rationality as
“form”: the mind reacts with dullness
to
too much subtlety and falls asleep:
1355but just as rationality has lost its way in—
to contact with every body cell, there it
corrects itself, having achieved an
ocean presence, where distinctions are