by A. R. Ammons
so slight and multiple, they assume
1360the wide look of universal constitution:
the mind, refreshed by that playing
out, at least, returns slowly
through the capillaries, regathers
itself in—
1365to its main drifts and
considerable matters and, announcing
itself, returns
to the circulations:
I think I already wrote about (or
1370thought about) this but
the alimentary canal as river with falls, lakes,
etc. is a good form, also the form
expansion-contraction: lot
of them, probably, all finding
1375ways to play in the imagination,
too: how delightful:
I saw through the earth once:
a clearing-through as if of light:
terror made the light, drilled it through:
1380the earth spindled, insubstantial as life:
another fellow saw through, once:
I hope the shakes did not shake him long
kill time
expect turmoil, gusts, shifts in stone,
1385expect the arms of change to spin
but allow the Singing Sage
to slip by on his Big Boat singing
Turmoil is Illusion
at the Heart of
1390the Great Peace
bedrock nestles
in flow
and flow rides
highways
1395tips of flame plume:
but under that,
deeply within,
the most fluent fluid, motion,
establishes the citadel
1400I can see but little,
and that with much leaning,
of the elm from this window and
indeed no part of that attached to the
ground but outbuoyed branches only,
1405mostly tips
nevertheless
possessing curvature of definition
in the uttermost, the tips ending in an
invisibly inscribed continuity or
1410configuration of nothingness:
if I worked in the other room
next to the elm
(a winter-sunny room)
I’d get to know more about
1415the elm
but so much more would dominate
the poem: to want a poem about
an elm is not to want a poem
too much so, or too much poem
1420too much so: if I need more
elm to say, I can
mosey over and peer
out into further information)
overwhelm whelm helm elm
1425this day bluedog clear
I stood in it absolutely
unoccupied a minute and
said how sharp the world
that cares nothing for
1430us is
but now at dusk,
billows come up
over the west looking
solider than hills
1435and black and blue with
snow, I think
how is it possible the world
so entertaining and extravagant
has nothing to do with us (on a personal
1440basis) though we
in the formation of gene arcs, contours,
sweeps, saliences, and spirals
were tested bit to bit by
billows, swell of snowwind,
1445bright our sandy river,
and found to survive the astonishments,
coping, throwing them back:
behind bars
when I have studied the elm
1450I hope to devote myself to the weather,
majors and minors of substance, the high
substance nothing is done about, the
low showers narrowed into washouts,
the happy variabilities day to day
1455winding round the deep variabilities of
season (reason, treason): the year
cycles, sunspot cycles,
micro, meso, macro: bi:
it’s too dark to see to write:
1460gather it up and rip it off
Shall Will Be Used Properly or Will Shall
Shall will be used properly or will shall
here near
midDecember
grayworks(if we have
1465hit the deepa falling off
dismal,we’ll fall
days clippedinto a
off onfalling out)
both ends till you can
1470hardly find the middle
but then comes a winter
festival (festival
estival) inaugurating
longer light
1475the city that cares
for tares(egad,
has no needgasso,
for weedsglorybe)
the M Sea bore
1480Civ, unhappy
daughter
(dumping the dump from 400
million sets of human guts
plus industrial scours, washes,
1485rinses) now killing
the mother,
a daughter who unless made a Bridegroom
of Intelligence
must swoon away into
1490self-poisoning unredemptive guilt,
whereas
with Wisdom for the weed,
Care for the ground cricket
(whatever is good for the ground cricket is
1495good for the country)
Concern for the undersea
rocky ledges of octopuses
the mother might
still have lineations of
1500life left which, clearness drawn deeply into,
would begin to show again
an image Mother Mediterranean:
but nothing is to be
expected of man, his
1505intentions tedious &
mean: by accident
he is wise or noble:
he sees not his life
one life among many
1510kinds of life, every
kind attuned to a
careful impulse
that lets it boom
and loll in its own
1515dwelling: Civ,
inconsiderate daughter, maker of weeping,
unnaturalizer, fabricator of
fabrications, pretender to feeling, huzzy,
it would hardly be unfair if
1520Sea gobbled you up so you could not harm
Forest, Icecap, Deep Trench, or Friendly
Breeze again, baby:
natural gas is okay on a cold night and
antibiotics are so fine when you need them:
1525but man’s fabrications aren’t as subtle
and resilient, flexible, accommodating
as natural complexes: why can’t we proceed
but show the proper respect:
FreshLARGEEggs
1530This carton is bio-degradable
a contribution to environment
(also, what are we to do with it if
you bring it back) a contribution, tribute,
offering, tithe
1535as if to the new god: ok then a few more
worshippers will do it:
playacting:
playoffs:
(Redskins, Raiders, Steelers,
1540Colts, Dolphins, Cowboys)
(look, cavity, no moms)
poeticules shrink up
into starved strategies
and strive to prove
1545skinny devices significant,
but I, I mean . . .
nothing works without a nearly
equal tug the other way:
and then one is fifty and feels oneself
1550(if no one else will) (no one else will)
in the tug of
a tendency, as if one w
ere an
impurity rushed through
various waters
1555to the kidney of selection
where the organism engages in certain
abandon:
but the mind, imagination, is only getting
fresh at last, wind free, ready for
1560treetop castle or diamond waterfall,
recalcitrance flowing loose, a clear honey
to the embrasures of sight:
truth’s a show,
a good one one that does not end before
1565the audience leaves: that holds
up a cranesweep of meaning,
snakes or eels or noodles, great
wound-up unwindings, heavy, light: that
lets no direction or effect grow pure
1570without contrariwisdom, counter-purity:
say not what
I have made
say what made
I have cut
1575free of:
Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman,
European, Holy-Roman, Anglican: we have
hills old-low,
lines of windbreaking lombardies:
1580windrows:
thickets wind-settling:
spruce nook moving nothing, resident
authorities
big rig
1585spoontangbig zig
spoontonguebig cig
dongtongbig fig
dungtonguebig MIG
tightassed tightend:big dig
1590eternal journal:big pig
big gig
big jig
mindgoggling:
the poet abandons a
1595place to the reader
I sometimes catch myself
fearful I’ve
let out the news of death,
told more than people will
1600please to hear,
a news, though, nowhere to be
kept still:
it flies loose and about
and is (must be) told in
1605every ear till
told too loud
no one’s there to hear
ass/mind balls/heart
ball loose flag down
1610it’s 4:20 dusk coming
the Redskins have a touchdown
to go with their fieldgoal
Phyllis made seven fruitcakes
undetermined square or round
No Tirement Like Retirement
1615No tirement like retirement
no floppage like stoppage
busy busy boys and girls
old geezers,
strungout ninnies (no
1620treads
like threads
retreads)
having made avocation vocation
I must now
1625rise through
making vocation avocation
so I can spend
my
time rusting(l)agony
1630dressed, undressed, redressed
use is the best polish
(drooping thru the chills of the
sorghum to
where the spinnet’s broke)
1635after so many days of
mingling, cloud and hill,
mists, skirts of vapor
dripping and valley-dragging, fringes,
brushing ghosts
1640through hillbrush, moon
and soon
I mean sun
clorox twins
everything lifted this morning and there
1645between the devil and the deep blue
between a rock and a hard place
between a cliff and a sharp slope
was the source bright,
looking central
1650a warmish morning walkable and how musty
I’d grown far off from the lean, mean
brook
its quick scars of light
its breaking, regathering,
1655ledges and clear heights underwater,
its mosslawned banks, rock terraces,
tangled vestment vine
(choked trees
deadwood trellises)
1660(those with
inclinations to
sprawl on
you, spurn,
sprawl on them)
1665if you come into the world
with an unspeakable structure or
stricture to speak,
a weird move to the freak fringe,
then you got an insoluble
1670problem, an
“immedicable woe”
you got a sore with a lifetime supply
of scabs, you is, in other words, in
business
1675the average person is average
the common people is common
the straight people is straight
you gone be the crooked weird
rare intelligent bird creep type
1680that what you gone be, honey
you gone look funny
when they put you in your
coffin
like you something
1685unright
like you ain’t
worth dying
like every day when they passes out the
honey
1690you gone get a little vial of fear and
you gone drink it yes you is
cause tomorrow when they passes out
the honey again
you gone git another one of those little vials
1695and what you gone do with them vials
honey better go head drink up one at a
time
cause you gone have something to
shake about too
1700while the others is shaking with
the sweetness
you gone be breaking out in the high
jives of terror
shaking like you done met up with some’m:
1705I hope no young’un mine
go through with that
(salt talk with a dash of pepper)
being there is the next best
thing to long distance
1710may I by
being me be
you for you
trust money
or will youand trust people
1715take my Ito try to get it
to be youaway from you
for a minute
as I will
take you
1720looks like an
to be Iall-day gray
when I can
maybe your you
Light Falls Shadow and Beam through the Limbo
Light falls shadow and beam through the limbo
1725limbboughs, short and long mixtures,
lineations,
staff and heading, balling the
boughs, clusters, white bass clefs
churning rotund
1730thunder and up there sparkling and
bellying out
skeins and scads of treble felicities,
cones and points:
tree as music in the light,
1735the scoring of the permanent
enchantment,
a presence not regular but hastening
or not like the imagination or
the wind
1740and telling
nothing but that though the gorge roars
and though
sodden swatches of forest spill
from a high ravine and though
1745a beaver is shut in by a boulder time
will slowly budge
and though we ourselves see and do not
know what we see and cannot tell why
we are here attracted to enchantment
1750and scriptures intermingling substance
and light—
oh, the hillways, passes, the peaks
of the thoroughly achieved!
some such dwelling in the light,
1755hardness in the ray,
the
interpenetration
that in leaving, separating out,
never leaves out,
that bringing things still again runs away
1760also with everything into night
Mist Curtains Lower and Dissolve
Mist curtains lower and dissolve
the ridges halfway down
(imagine
a thunderstorm predicted
1765for midDecember,
55 but
no thunder yet: rain,
though)
1:01
17701:00
:59downspouts
the threequarter
moon at midnight
shining from a
1775high sky’s well
on this host of
hills, the lake
off to the side
there glimmering
1780in a big space,
a Christmas tree
crystalline with
colored lights
down a near slope,
1785way over the valley
a string
of glitter, a
highway, ropes a
slope: how can we
1790be here: how is
it possible, here
with earth moon sun
these people these
myths and dreams:
1795were we not here
we could never
be
thought of:
oxbows of
1800highway rise
like a
small elation
over the opposite
ridge
The Snow Is Fine-Sightless Today the Ground
1805The snow is fine-sightless today the ground
brightens white for no cause
and the green garageroof
is all at once side-white
the elm’s grooves and streaks
1810of bark are highlighting: it’s 28
again to be 10 tonight
make
all the fuse that’s lit to glinta
one handy tool (ah) difference
1815arm milkwhen we
eye cunt cheesehave nothing
hip shitsignificant
leg cometo say
ear bloodspelling it
1820toe waxright matters
lip eye cracklings(makes a
jaw snotdifference)
rib spit
I reckon
1825cornholers get dooky
on their tools (and yucky blood)
time’s dust is a rinse
nothing resists
to get the spook off language,
1830the microphone, pulpit, lectern, the high
whines and
broad moans out,