by A. R. Ammons
and, time’s fill, fills time:
there’s no news like snow news:
3250the tongue stuck out,
tongue tip, sticky:
then teeth, mouth, the
shaping back and the business
of swallowing: the
3255slender esophagus, bottomed
with a valve, followed by a
great opening out, containing
another valve, then subsidiary organs,
duodenal and pancreatic, and
3260interpenetrated systems,
blood and air, followed by
a meandering of
guts that roil and shift,
then the water system and
3265larger hunks of gut (nice, necessary,
so precisely made) finally
the mechanisms of holding
and releasing
man is a motion through
3270variations on a tube
Larry Brown
those who fret to generate
intensity don’t understand
those who thrash in lakes
3275of fire for the cool banks
vice versa
The Wind Picks Up Slick
The wind picks up slick
bounding upslope
on the slippery freeze
3280“build your own worksop bench”
insulation services
tile and formica contractor
welding
upholstery service
3285bath remodeling
gutter installation
heating and air conditioning
concrete construction
ceiling installations
3290fireplace and chimney service
the indigestible
unaired into meaning
area rugs
saxony plush broadloom
3295speaker systems
Ed White
Steelers & Cowboys
grain off the old pebble
pebble off the old stone
3300stone off the old rock
rock off the old boulder
boulder off the old range
range off the old divide
divide off the old tectonic
3305jerk off the old jerk
arrrive
Cold Didn’t Keep the Stuff
Cold didn’t keep the stuff
kissed back last
fall & forsythia &
3310pear florets couldn’t
sleep, woke up blooming
in winter’s skirts
spring’ll spring blossom-light
know your onions
3315a sprung spring can’t
unspring and spring again
till devices and
rondures have clicked
through and gone round
3320ramrod concept
you would think it
easier for happiness to
happen than for
unhappiness to unhappen
3325words’ windy feed
in perilous times one needs
for diversion
clipped, unsustained
lyrics with no
3330drama (stifled cries)
vehicles to stir reality
a touch away,
to hold the unnamed nameless
back,
3335till when times ease one may
creep into focus on sharp
rims, the alleyways of
the long arisings
water
3340squall largelyto
shapelessplants
the flakesis
repeat the crystalair
to
3345balloons
adultery
infantry
accomplish a designation
dense for though
3350we would understandget
the world we wouldthis
not have it stop
or disappear
our doorstep mouse
3355travels little
this time ofa snow
year, waits for a drymole
snow and tunnels
under the surface,
3360a furrow burrow which
collapses behind into
permanent waves and windings,
exact histories
till high wind blows
3365or the sun looks
defining terms was Socrates’s
way of not knowing himself
if one’s hopes
cease to rise
3370so will one’s peccadillo
I think I may not write much
today
I didn’t write much before
breakfast
3375and during breakfast I was
busy eating
and right after breakfast
I had to go, the setting good
for getting things out but
3380short on things to write
them down with or on,
memory my shortest instrument:
I drove John to school, so
cold and windy,
3385and it took me twenty minutes
to get my pollution control
equipment overload to let up
on the choke and smoke
so I wrote practically nothing
3390during that time maybe a note
on a matchbook or map or
gasoline ticket (whatever,
I lost it)
so by mid-morning the time
3395up to then was a perfect loss
as far as writing goes
so since I had the car
already warm I went over
to the University, picked
3400up a few things,
arranged them, and, nothing
doing, came on back
and by the time I got the
coffee heated up began
3405to think of lunch
so Phyllis and I had a
great lunch composed of
soup with turkey strippings
in it, I mean we added the
3410turkey, it was delicious, a
delicacy, and I didn’t write
a word the whole time, then
after lunch I rushed off to
be in on this thesis-defense
3415having to do with David Jones
and that lasted you wouldn’t
believe how long
and I didn’t get anything down
on paper
3420to speak of
but after that, late in the
day, the sun having broken out
clean into a perfectly clear
sky, I just came home and hung
3425in there, meditating on that
happy brightness
and as anyone knows you cannot
meditate properly if you
interrupt yourself to write
3430what you’re thinking down
so even though we have
a quarterhour left to
sundown I don’t think I’ll get
much done today
3435toodleoo
Teeth Out
Teeth outogu
toenails inlugl
dyy
when you’re
3440up you’re
out of thisle mismo
world and whendifference
you’re downchickweedo
you’re outgone
3445to
goodness
poetry is the life of criticism
When I Think of “the Poet
When I think of “the Poet
paramount”
3450how nature narrowed
through him without
loss of breadth
through one past the aspiration
of envy,
3455free of the fidgetings,
picky dispositions, effects
of lesser men (giants
themselves)
one in no
need of praise
3460for why thank
a tree whose leaves inscribe
the sun’s doings,
one better left unpraised
where praise falls away
3465from its objectmy premature
sex life
entangling poetcame before
untangling criticmy mature
sex life
3470weeds don’t read books
(or write them) so I sing
of weeds and they
don’t turn red or pale
with embarrassment orif That
3475gratitude or turn meWhich Is
singing pale or redspoke it
wd say
big rigsThat Which
big digstookusIs speaking
3480bosoms
few & far between
when duh
when thegoing git
“voice”tough duh
3485(thetough git
assimilator)gone man
is too
strong it consumes the
particulars (words,
3490images, tones, meanings)
a clearing
in bulrushes as if an
elephant had paraded
through, more opaque
3495than voice
but no pushier
shoving every drift with oar
my poetry has(some weeds
fallen off athat stand
3500little, it hasthrough winter
slackenedcollect
from standingsnowblossoms
right up inbigger
therethan their summer
3505and doing it,blooms)
it has weakened away,
it’s soft
a hollow
log’s as((.))
3510good a. .
place as
any for
a long holeSigmund took our
head out of
3515the clouds and
gumhung it between
surgeryourlegs
hello
in
3520there
a lot of sunshine today now falling in
gold vertical striping against
the garage and breaking to
fall on up the roof
3525a glorious coldness
and brightness antibacterial as saliva or vulture shit
You Can’t Get It Right
You can’t get it right:
if it doesn’t slide off thefrom side
track on one sideto slide
3530it will on the other or
find an unsuspected
side to slide off: it will not
go right down the slender middle
long:
3535stabilize political
matters by turning them
over to permanent agencies
and how do you
protect yourself against
3540the stability:
return the matters to politicians and,
every election re-stirring the ambience,
you lose continuity
things, tilt acquired,he has her
3545achieve acceleration:all sewed up
the tongue, powerful,
moving organ, will in the
dark find bliss’s button,
describe its contours,
3550buffet gently and swirl it,
and then swarm warmth (and
grease) into other areas
equally touchy and astonishing
suffusingly
3555we are to several
organisms, micro
and macro, in their
billions,
as islands, archipelagoes,
3560isthmuses, regions, elevations,
continents, seas: the mouth’s
pit folks, so many kinds, the
friendly anaerobe
(honey, see your bacteriologist
3565twice a night)
yes
vultures (and other
scavengers) will
eat up the ruptures, lesions, gashes,
3570dissolving sores of dead
animals
and gut-cleanse the disease till
shit’s reductive bit, which may
stink, is (as the world
3575is made) purelike so
so like
poets probe and punish out
dark eruptions or
invasions of the
3580public mind and deposit in clear
anthologies
lean germicidal turd of the just
word restored
the poet wantsthe poet, torn by
3585to govern, sway;maximum knowledge,
he wantsmakes the best
a difficultpossible decision,
dialectical test,tradeoff in recent
particulars formingtimes—governs,
3590into motions andimitating the
parties: he wantsreal thing & the
contention, compromise,enterprise of each
sneak plays, judgments,of us to himself
surprises wherein he
3595whatever the body knows
or teaches,
the known, found through the
body, can exist other than in
the body, the dancer, for
3600example, the single body
never out of itself, writes
a story entangled, interlocking,
unfolded on the stage which
lasts in the head when
3605the dancer has gone, a rondure,
a tendency and completion,
whose composure memory finds
and forms and imagination
redisposes and revisits at will
3610if you could write much
superlatively beautiful
like reaches of
snow in the Rockies no
one visits
3615imagine high-lying
writing unread wasted on
ridges and peaks
separate as word is from
thing, the motions of the language
3620system correspond to
the motions of the world system
rather closely one, taking first one
and then, to the extent
possible, the other side into account,
3625thinks
the woodlark,
the lilt and liquid
upward-breaking spiral,
sound’s artesian spring (the
3630dogs get excited in the thicket
rushing up the pheasant, making
plain hens fly off
chirping) but
I love the mockingbird, childhood’s
3635bird, most, and
weather changes or winter feed
has brought him to live here
where till this year I had
not seen him and now
3640with everything down white
(and mockingbird quite silent)
I see him flash across the
snow
into the big round yew or
3645cedar bush
whatever it is
and pick the leftover
shriveled or half-shriveled
red cedar or yew berries
3650and he seems fat enough
dealing with the cold long
nights (I put out a cage of
suet but he will not light on it)
I wonder when in spring
3655musing he’ll
dropping burst the first note,
sweep a cluster of shatters into song,
and then fire the air with
a fire-line glinting unwinding
3660(the days lengthen, this morning’s
rim-sky rosy at seven:
last evening
the great orb tucked in
a last slice at 20 to 5!)
3665the crow I think
has smelled my suet
&
nbsp; but surely he
won’t come to it
hanging on a nail near the
3670ceiling of the backporch
press the incidental
to assume the general
(any particular general)
most people don’t like to think
3675of the stuff in their livingroom
as sitting there, chairs,
lamps, end tables, vases, tables:
they think they ought to have a focal
point, so they get something big &
3680noticeable, like a philodendron,
and plunk it down where nobody
can miss it
and that is not what a focal point is
I declare the crows have
3685come right in to hanging
around in the maple tree
and I jest bet you five
dollars since it’s over
thirty today they got the
3690scent of that suet and
they jest a waitin’ that’s
what they doin’ they jest
a waitin’ sooner or later
they gonna plunk right
3695there on the porch and
start a grabbin’ and a
tearin’ well I thought this
year I was goin’ to make up
my mind to do somethin’
3700good fer nature but that
warn’t the nature I meant to
do any good fer that’s a
fact and I don’t keer who
knows it them crows is a
3705eating up what little bit
of stuff people has and if
they ain’t something done
about it I’ll tell you they
won’t be a thang left around
3710here that them crows ain’t
fooled with I bet
you five dollars on that
see see see you can
see it for a pennis
3715come comewill teen wind
(unlikely)slice the yellow
come, comepeaks off acne
(more likely)
I have not been out to stand
3720near or touch the elm
recently so though I see it
occasionally through the other
room’s window
I lack heavy information that
3725it remains substantial and yet
by faith I have no doubt
if I went out there
to hang myself on it
it would do well enough