The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1
Page 66
scald and rinse every word
till it takes on and gives off
1835the exact hue (drift)
for for
the most part
language moves our lips while
we grind, hiss, haw—
1840let the words have no rich soup
they cannot themselves generate
if fellows burr, hum, buzz, loop
break out strict shears
snip ropes from the heavy molasses to
1845hang those fellows with
tipping from pole to pole
we flash through uprightness, stability,
truth but
unchanging reality
1850is the polar extreme’s
intolerable
exaggerated weather
the temperate zone the land of soft announcement
one desires leisure, ease, if
1855those are to be desired, when one
might desire action, stress, doing
as being, too, ideal
I write this to be writing,
wife gone off with a stationwagonload
1860of women to Rochester in the snow,
son at school,
office hours this afternoon,
meeting,
Christmas coming,
1865me home
go through
I’m not sure there’s enough light
out there to make a day of
but look
1870a patch of blue the size of a man’s hat:
it could grow into a radiant clearing,
blue inanition, dome of
high feeling, starvation
when a father dies
1875the sky comes unlooped from the stars
The Hen Pheasants Streak Out of the
The hen pheasants streak out of the
thicket
down the hedgeline through the
yard
1880selfcentered shortsightedness
fag pag jag
feg peg jegtrouble
fig pig jigshovel
fog pog jog
1885fug pug jugstir-fry
is life ais life aa puzzlement
show deathshow truth a bit of
corrects killsa difficulty
or is or is
1890death atruth a
show lifeshow life
correctskills
as you go into life (some say they
wish they were alive or dead) you must
1895forget where you’re going
which is into death
but as you go into death you must begin
to take a more general and perhaps
generous view of life, and not be
1900so particular
but that may be the difficulty
that we are heavy
to relinquish our made selves,
mirrorments, to the trust of the
1905great unwieldy, unspecific self:
in these transmissions
we are not like to be consulted:
our talents turn to attitude:
verbal flak:
1910(a bishop or royal personage
displays his
flabella, a touch to the
human that he sweats)
picking up brilliants, bowerbirdwise,
1915etc., or as with the builder
of beercan palaces, tidbits, also, of
tile, mirror, sherd, whatever with a
paste, mortar, of cogitation, sealing
throughout making of-a-piece: but if
1920you seek brilliants it’s
no matter what shines:
the value is apparent in apparent shining
but those who dwell upon
and on the invisible
1925value not the visible
apparency
not diamond-shine
but rarity or hardness
so invisible
1930to deal with muddlement
which is not
just a mixture but
a single speaking of multiple clarities
(very puzzling unless the
1935clarities are so small
as with sand
they will lose their special identities
to a general view)
to deal with muddling or muddlement
1940confine the currency of inquiry
within fairly narrow banks urging
and also guiding flow
so that means can go out among the
areas and question closely
1945so to speak
or drop bits of matter at the roots
of things so that answers may grow
(we need have faith
only
1950that of course currency is
winding
that can never wind away,
cannot go far without returning,
an observation
1955so succinct
faith
is perhaps too high a shelf to bother)
when I look death
in the eye
1960my pavilions quiver
and my crystal battlements
and walls of high castle
dance in the afternoon breeze
this one
1965death swept
shape
broken off from the
earth broken off
from the mother
1970spent now except
for the flicker of
burning out
supposed to get cold tonight
the ephemeral lasts because
1975it’s back fast
Dawn Clear
Dawn clear
by sunrise
hazes rifflesyou want to be
furrows and floats bullfucked when
1980of fluffmine is no longer
appearthan a penguin
so the sun
has too much
to come throughquilt raffle
1985to come throughantiques
handcrafted gifts
make verballive country music
things tangleswhimsies, furbelows, and
mazes puzzlessundries
1990clusters
consonancesbitter winds
dangles knots &clink the tinkle
stuff to havebell in the tree
somethingand find
1995to fool withcold’s exact key:
when time hasthe big male
a bigger presence,pheasant sulls
margin, thanlow on one foot
things or actions
2000I make things
and abandon
them for you
the sun didn’t do much for us today
but it de-snowed the garage roof
2005and left a crop of
smallish icicles down the eaves-row
If You Were Standing under the Elm and
If you were standing under the elm and
looked up it would be dark
but if you were above it (flying?)
2010and looked down it would be
white:
dust or flurry snow, the fine
sifty stuff, has not missed a twig,
hiding it from the sky: but if it
2015gets windy and wrenching or if a
crow lights somewhere and flaps his
wings squawking, then
darkness may be noticeable
In the Old
In the old
2020days
of vaginal, or coincidental,
sprays
hairpie diners
could have plum
2025tart, peach or
strawberry
tart (in the old days words didn’t buy
much)
get morepedazo
2030out ofde
going outburro
authentic theatrical
forms with
mimes, masks,
2035puppets, processionals, players
(singers
keepgroups
mybands
wordwriters
2040composers)
islets and islettes
informal (isles)formal (tisles)
soup aisle
aisle de soup
2045do-ahead dough
super bargains in vinyl flooring
roll-ends for bathrooms, entryways,
pantries, laundry rooms
grind
2050she said this afternoon that
because of the snowsqualls she
might have to put a damper
on her shopping expeditions
the sun came out enough
2055to moon
behind the snowclouds
so, everything loaded,
there’ll be no unloading
today
2060unless by dusk the wind comes unsprung:
the hemlocks,
sculpture all day, now
nod in the breezy free-ends
ohyesohyes
2065so many whales plundering through,
more whaleback than water
hemlocks made to order
to hold snow
were also made
2070limber to sway snow
loose
or at least hang unsplinteringly
in white
holding:
2075lamb sandwich
Namath, ribs bruised, limped off the cold
field today, Shea Stadium snowy, windy,
four days before Christmas, Namath who
broke all showing-them-how’s expectations!
2080if we are reluctantif only one could
to step into the fieldmake or find a bit of
when it is our timewisdom that turned
we may be reluctant to leavethrough a situation
the surroundingsor two would hold
2085when our timestill or still hold
has passed
it’s after sunset
cloudy
cold and gray
2090but tomorrow is
to reach the mid-thirties
Forecast for Today (Winter’s Firstday)
Forecast for today (Winter’s Firstday)
(you may
recall) was
2095thirty-five or so (which hasn’t seen
twenty yet)
beefed up this morning by a promise of
sunny spells
but now at five minutes to one the drifty
2100tinkle of snowflakes
merely continuos: a few minutes ago,
in truth,
a blue patch appeared sky-high but the sun,
wintering elsewhere, wasn’t there so
2105nothing hit the ground here:
couple three months ago
I cut a grapevine out of the big cedar
to reduce weight’s becluttering darkness
but here the snow’s
2110getting into the tree as much as
grape leaves shaded light out:
at dusk a flock of pheasant
will be-wing, shrieking rusty flanges, up
and beheist themselves,
2115belaboring beswung boughs:
the squirrels in the thicket
had such a good time this fall
up-and-down winding
chasing each other
2120I bet there isn’t a flake
of loose bark unfallen
on a trunk
in the whole blame thicket
all I ever know is
2125rigor between the shoulderblades,
lumber in the gut,
hard theory-light in the head:
I process life by shaking,
I’m a sifter: I wish I were limber
2130and relaxed, able to affirm the self
and take from the world a small taking
limberer than lumber
I swerve attention out of the mix of
myself into the outerness where otherness
2135can conjoin my outerness whereas
only I can look into myself
and I spend enough time doing that
the sun broke out before setting
but set behind new clouds moving
2140in: the Christmas tree’s up and
John & I have bought presents,
everybody has bought everybody presents
I Come in from the Snowy World
I come in from the snowy world
of muffled roads and she says
2145how’s the outside world
and I say
still outside (gotterdattoom)
Giants Beat Saints
you can’t step forward with
2150both feet on the ground
proverbs suck up recalcitrant reality
and spit out a beam of light but
emerge among them
systems of conflict, divergence,
2155contradiction: too many
proverbs obstruct the view
but enhance the reality:
not the wisdom but saying’s finding:
the middle regions
2160toilet paper chinks cracks
against excessive windiness:
jocundity
the beswirling elm this morning was attacked
by white bees
2165last night after sunset the weather
warmed up, night-snow-blue clouds
heaped on the horizon,
holding, glowing underneath in earthshine
in winter here
2170the sun arcs a
southern circle of small compass
and has
slight surface relation
to temperature
2175except
ice will melt off a car or
highway great
in direct radiation
but it warmed up last night after sunset
2180to twenty-five and the fronds and
jungle foliages (that make
in teens climates)
ran off the windows, thaw’s
deconstruction:
2185how does a running back hold it
sight
feeds on a
medium
whose
2190source blinds
but no big
sound gives
off little
earfuls
2195although the ear can be exploded
(not death
but life canone forgets
bebefore one
missed)is forgotten
2200the squalla bit of
comes ondried hydrangea
from the westblossom
across the lakecomes loose and
with the sunthe wind
2205behind itrolls it
suffusing it,over a yard of
oblivion meltingsnowcrust the wind
everythingvariable
enough to
2210play
the blossom with us,
no, there it
goes behind
the garage
2215on the way down
but then the
squall hits
with fierce soft
mingling
2220snow
ghosts stand up
and walk off the roof
Poetry Is the Smallest
Poetry is the smallest
trickle trinket
2225bauble burst
the lightestf
windseed leaftipr
snowdowne
poetry is the breakse
2230the least loopd
fromo
the general curvaturem
into delight
poetry is
2235the slightestf
hue, hint, hurtr
its dance too lighte
not to be the wind’s:e
yet nothingd
2240becomes itselfo
<
br /> without the overspillm
of this small abundance
•
you don’t mind, do you, I
2245said to the mountain, if
I use this ledge or, like,
inspiration pavilion to say
a few things out over the
various woods, streams, and
2250so on: by all means, said
the mountain: I was a little
concerned, I said, because
the speech is, like, aboutonly
the individual vs the majorwhere
2255structures and, like, Iwe
are
was thinking of siding withto
the individual: but, oflose
course, said the mountain:all
2260well, but, I said, itare
we
doesn’t make any differenceto
what I say if it doesn’thave
make any difference: please,here
2265said the mountain, be my guestand
there
•a
trifle
a slice of clearingonly
2270widened over the ridge atwhere
sundown and the sunwe
stood in it a minute,are
full glow flapping up againstto
the garage and treeslose
2275and through the windows againstall
the walls and it was very niceare
say around four twenty,we
gold effluvia goneto
by four twentysevenbe
2280here
•beholding
everything
poet friend of mine’s
dick’s so shortstill his fat wife’s
2285he can’t pull it long enoughradiant every morning:
to pee straight with:he humps well, probably,
not to pee onstringing her out far and
anybody by surpriseloose on the frail hook:
sideways, he hunkersand, too, I notice she
2290into the urinal so farfollows his words
he looks like, to achieve,closely like one who
relief:knows what a tongue can do
Christmas Eve Morning
Christmas Eve morning
a sifting of snow
2295blurry clouds
with near-clear spans of western blue
still at nine