by A. R. Ammons
experience of example,
2760concretion, or sensuous
actuality; or, toward the
coincidental, the single
example, event, or thing
without context or placing,
2765the isolated particular:
poetry operates, not to deny
the abstraction or the
particular and not to diminish
the distance between them but
2770to hold in relation the
widest play between them
shooting irontoday, fair, saw the sun
don’t riot bade lionsall the way down
flowers flowtill, arc lost, it
2775flower bowlstouching scattered up
and down the ridge,
bulbs and spherules glowing
coals crumbling and I think
it was 4:30 before the
2780operation ended: this adds
a minute or two
to the hold of light
The First Morning in a Few
The first morning in a few
the windows haven’t been
2785ice-befrizzled, bestreaked,
befoliaged, or befrilled,
the numerous fronds & species: today
is mostly plain
pane invisibility: but at 33
2790and snowing, sleeting, and
raining, a few driblets stick
to the panes still ice, clear
as ice or water, a bomb gone
off at LaGuardia
2795and 11 people killed:
the snow scanty, slow,
big-flaked, I went out
into a reality
audible with unsuspected
2800sleet:
round and square
dancing and
dancing undetermined
square or round
2805I care not a fig
for a fag in a fog
fog in a fug
fug in a fig
fug a jug
2810(jig a fig)
sphincter of Oddi in
your face!
it was supposed to be warm today
up to 40 or 45
2815but it wasn’t and more sleet
fell than ice melted
now we have six new inches of
snow
This Is
This is
2820the great
man’s skull:
we saved
it from
the fire
2825so you
might see
the light
in it
any part of the day you
2830move out of the accuracy
of honor you waste
for honor, in no need of
sanction, moves in its own
self-evidence, necessity:
2835if we prove
unworthy of tenure
on earth earth will
give us notice
the force of necessity
2840merely operates
(but lay a log across
the flow, you have
a bridge)
poison earth, eat poison
2845I get so much good out of my
neighbors: they don’t
speak or visit
but they come
home from a trip
2850and put on the lights or I
look out the window on a cold
night and see one or two
of their windows lit and get
neighborly feelings
Quilted Spreads
2855Quilted spreads
pigeons every morning prowl
and rove
the hills at
fifty
2860miles an hour:
out walking, prowling, I
hear them coming
a soft, intense muscling
then the visual speed,
2865cushioned rigor
constitutional
quarter to ten and the sun’s
nothing, more in the south
than east,
2870leftover moon
are you looking for a minute,
second in the welter,
grain of what-for, nit of
news, bind of delight
2875just this way
may a fart pule brown billows
about your earlobes
may your teeth acquire anal
longings and fly home
2880may your rump-grooving nose
plunge into the shot pot
towels pillows & bath rugs
polyester fiberfill
jumbo welt
2885hand-knotted fringe trim
CALL US FOR YOUR
NEW YEA SEVE GALA
an increased middle region
answers polarities
2890the pode which be
de (pod) foot and antipode
which gwine ter natcherly be
de head, baby do,
some lard, though, hung and
2895swung about the organs,
subcutaneous rugs, blankets,
drapes, curtains, stuffed
liver, swoll’n gut,
(with a railyard of fuming,
2900fussing, foaming, and verting)
these enlargements, equatorial
intensifications, of
content between the mouth
and so forth:
2905forget the colorless, clear,
frigid, polar life:
come to
where thepuddentang
zonky wohwoh
2910pleasure is
will one waft whither wind
winds forever
the current moves with
necessity’s inner accuracy
2915but mind what will it do
it will not accord
as if a native element
indistinguishable: it will
not have currency
2920but come into a state of
its own
terrain decision settles
choice disposes
some influence as to what will
2925and will not be
for example choice though
will need to choose what
cannot be unchosen what is
like stone grain
2930constitutional
for example loneliness
one need not look forever
out of windows or into
adjoining offices
2935or mailboxes
for the thing that will
not come, the face from
wax-museum memory
no
2940one may say loneliness if
with me
it is myself
it will not remove
it is mine
2945I hold it to myself
I will not let go of it
it is clothes on a certain
person it is a sharp watch on
a hemlock jay
2950it is the long tunnel of
memory personalized with
murals and hangings
it is where I must
hacking go
2955there will be some terror
I accept
it is mine
it comes
and when it goes
2960leaves furious fragrances
one will dispose
the disposable
I will not for example love
a new person
2965not with that force’s full
focus
I will love sweeps, banks,
and glances
and lengthy spaciousness but
2970I will not
grant an extended reach
or stir to fill a need
the decision is a new knowledge,
the matter shaped and settled
2975monthly payment
the last day of se
venty-five
some sun this morning mostly
gray this afternoon
fairly warm some melting
2980say thirty-five
having missed the calisthenics
of maturity
I practice early and late
to catch up with what is
2985gone
I am not wise
please forgive me for writing
even so
correct me with your own
2990deep acceptances of
condition and self
I call attention
I enliven when I can
to open press here
2995string out the old
string in the new
happy new year
Dung Ball, Round Graveyard
Dung ball, round graveyard,
wax ball, this sphere, nest
3000cell-laced with permanent eggs,
these dead moving loose
in vines through branches,
this orange body and apple body
devoured, our mouths
3005the substance of millings:
the sabertooth’s big-game furnace
burned forty million years:
elephants, rhinoceroses stoked
it: look in his skull, cool,
3010polished:
the hominid ancestor dreamed
him through entanglements of fire,
the polishes of volition: the
more recent, the thinker, the banquet,
3015observed him go closely by:
have you heard
the mockingbird:those who
have nothing
markhave nothing
3020the woodlark:to lose
words, a sculpture, let us
see wind:
the cart after a time
goes not on as a cart
3025rock the boat in a calm sea: people
in storm wildernesses hold on,
balance against, empty out,
a mindlessness resembling the
conservative: the revolutionary
3030is stable in it and
cannot bear it:
the upland bog!
a flat clearing
means pond-water snowed under,
3035and brown-shambled fringe
broken high from
by right cattails
smart and clean as pricks
bog
3040clearing
prick freud
ruined everything
tops in scoring and rebounding:
violence, suspense, and non-stop action:
3045strikes, spares, and splits:
fireplace specialist:
carpentry, masonry, plumbing,
painting, roofing, wiring, heating:
it looks like today
3050though it commenced
thea year isn’t going
to amount to much
firstgray skies
meal-like gritty
3055comessnow enough
to make running whirls and curls
righton the highway: we
just went to FAYS:
afterbought a plant:the death of god
3060sort of jointythe god of death
thecactus put it in
a big glass jarcleared off late
lasthad pretty goodthe flat light
roots reckoncomes underwood
3065ifthey’ll root alllike a fire
rightright the others I
beforegot last week did
the
servedthe content of the obsession
3070changes but the form returns
lay across the multiple
polymorphous
defining inventions
that limit and
3075accentuate so as to say
we, too, exist
I’m one fourth as
old as the country
I See Downhill a Patch
I see downhill a patch
3080mixed in the tops of two or
three cedars—the lake,
a mile’s breadth hardly wider
than cedars’ tips
when we dam sluices
3085in river gaps
we don’t violate
the accuracy of flow
but build a temple
to flowing nature,
3090housing for the river god,
our structure interpreting river nature
time outtime up
in timedown time
outage
3095yesterday the west cleared by
sunset and the sun
went down
a bright spot in an exact place
but as it went deeper
3100glow widened up and down
the ridge
until half an hour later
the storm had broadened
and caught up the earth
3105in a rising fire
but it was only nothing
because here we are today
(one who makes much
of little
3110makes much of little
aches and pains,
trivial inconveniences,
slight delays, and is
a pain
3115to work with or
be around)
in a full radiance
morning having broken from
the very skin of sunrise
3120bright and
unrelenting and here just
past now
the windows beam,
the floor scattered with
3125the fallen lumber of light:
thousands in wars have lost
their hands and/or feet—
specially in recent wars
where things picked up or
3130stepped on
have exploded
(if you can bear to feel it
you will never cause it)
Big Old Thang
3135She stuffed vulvas in the
cracks, hammered the main
labiums together with
vaginas and stapled
the clitorises up till it was
3140to the point he
couldn’t get a thing in there.
this is your spotty reporter
folks
putting one on
3145first day after the first
look like it all gone down
(criticize in general
praise in particular)
The Stomach Is Quite
The stomach is quite
3150a development
on the esophagus and
if cross-country is
efficient
the small intestines
3155represent a winding
parlousness
so I don’t think
we will be
concerned if the
3160continuo’s overwhelmed
underground
by appallingly
pretentious blocks of
paydirt
3165it goes on trinkling under
there, eventually reappearing
enunciating
Big, BIG savings on all
units
3170low mileage
fully equipped
mint condition
houseflies are spongers
My Neighbor Shakes Feed along
My neighbor shakes feed along
3175the spruce thicket fringe and
keeps the pheasant plopping on
down, their central heating,
main ramp to life’s roots:
lucky for the pheasant they
3180have a big ass and long
tail to sustain them above the
snow when their legs blop through
you have to feel pretty
good to have a good time:
3185the aspirant spiral: you remember
the aspirant spir
al
the limbs’ topside catches the
eye today
high-lit with downsnow
3190brighter than snow’s
underglow
thescads
ordinaryarpeggios
realmobbligatos
3195of& cadenzas
theof detail
ready-to-wear
(though the pentameter’s heaved we’re
splinter assertions of the great iamb)
Nature As Waterfalls
3200Nature as waterfalls,
lives, or generations
spills fast,
not fashion-fast
nature as ridge is deep
3205stay:
these the oldest
mountains in the
world,
authority fills the
3210clearings
under cedar
thickets
or writes precisely as the ridge
across the blue dusk coelum
3215authority’s springs and
white-scaping falls, the responsive
rounding off of hills,
creek- and riverways
are a spelling out no
3220character muddles but
characters, the wind’s many
motions, inscribe,
a telling not of one
thing to another, pen
3225to paper, chalk to slate,
skyscraper to groundbase,
microinscription to fossil
but undivided telling:
this writing
3230makes bowls
and fills seas: man older
than the megalith faced
unstoried stone, deep
priority, as this about here,
3235now after a hundred years its
millions hardly broken into:
here in America the
fashion, the scale or
intellectual sheet, sorts
3240against a chasm without time
and one the other criticizes
to digest but, the reach not
commensurate, the maw
can’t feed: this not an
3245evening land but a
morning too early to make anything out:
the ridge fills our moment