The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1

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,