by A. R. Ammons
The Perfect Journey Is
3730The perfect journey is
no need to go
another nothingly clear day and
I went
to walk between the pine
3735colonnades
up the road on the hill and there
hill-high in dry cold
I saw the weaves of glitterment
airborne, so fine,
3740the breeze sifting
figurations from the snow
reservoirs of the boughs
Snow of the
Snow of the
right consistency,
3745temperature, and
velocity will
fall in a lee
slope
building out over
3750space a
promontory of
considerable
reach in
downward curvature:
3755and snow
will do this
not once
but wherever possible,
a similarity of effect
3760extended
to diversity’s
exact numeration
. . .
here a month of snow,
3765more January than
February, intervenes
during which
I wrote
nothing: it is
3770the winter-deep, the
annual sink:
leave it unwritten,
as snow unwrites
the landscape
3775. . .
The Prescriptive Stalls As
The prescriptive stalls as
to when to take effect:
the admonishment loses the
color of certainty: the
3780recommendation lies down like
a mule and rolls in the sand:
the traders arrive with their
incredible auctioneer and
commence to squabble
3785and at the end of the day
nothing has been sold or
bought: in having found no
imbalance into a way out
as yet, an imbalance that
3790throws the leaves and
hangings of imbalance into
balance, I stand for
whatever will not come round
or be whole
3795or made out or reduced:
here breakdown allows
the small solution to
operate on the local problem:
this morning I got up early
3800and took the wetsack off my
foot, toe healing:
I went down and
turned up the heat, so
everybody could get up warm,
3805then I made coffee, cooked
an egg, had toast:
it was glorious enough:
but anyhow the man said it
will truly go to fifty today:
3810it’s already 30: when all
the hills’ holdings and the
trees’ and ridges’ loosen and
commence to trickle or
slide, gouge out and roar,
3815we may have a thaw
disturbance, that aspect
to happiness and warmth:
I hope it will take on
slow-moving
3820•
or after shoals of selloffs,
options, shorts, long-terms,
after heavy-risk purchases
and quick turnovers, the
3825unspeakable auctioneer having
fed in his energy and taken
his toll, there at the day’s
end is my portion: crust:
I just got back from the
3830University: so many
matters of great interest and
no moment:
but in the moment the general
world assigns,
3835the special person, the
one taking the brunt,
finds the ultimate explosion:
a former student, now
representing a book publisher,
3840stops by: he is engaged:
soandso calls that soandso
will not keep the appointment
because her father has died:
soandso left her dog
3845at home shut up
because he runs after
bitches and winds up
in the pound:
a University writes offering
3850me a job: one who
wants to apply for the job
won’t get it:
the turn of the day:
the spill, waterfall, shed:
3855impossible to make
any version
(perversion better than no
version at all)
adequate to the circumstance:
3860one enlarges the scope
and increases the fill-in:
deepens, dumps, delineates
the fill-in:
who or what is watching over
3865the waterfall (the waterfallwatcher)
where the
spill picks up, the urgencywe can be okay
takes on muscle and speed,socially and
the fast overshoot withknow that the
3870giddy, weightless fall,same moral laws
and the splintering disturbanceare operating
against bottom, rock, water:as before, as
things pick up, of course,usual, and still
from there and go on in a newgrind crudely at
3875mildness but strange setting:the circular
some things pass intoedge between
unrecognizable strangeness:human and natural
is no one watching, oflaw, one harmony
course not,not disclosing
3880not even a gentle, universalhow it
principle with a calming circularity, meshes with
a soft persuader reminding usanother
of the marvels, the highharmony
concerns and yearnings over
3885us, the realms luminous our
understanding
need only bend for comfort to:
are we here, single things,
lifted up into clarity and
3890recognition
by the same powers and forces
to be struck down, the calm
coasting going quite on beyond
us: or is it here precisely
3895that sleeve enters sleeve
so we see the interpenetrations,
to live to die, not to
die not to live, this is
the motif, announcement,
3900deep conditioner, the knowledge
from which there is no
freedom and no freedom
except in the knowledge,
the hardest, most bitter
3905schooling beauty and decay
could have devised,
allowing, though, ironic sweets
highest invention is humbled by:
one is helpless: one weeps:e
3910terror raves beyond the tear:q
one is without help:u
and then one sees or recallsa
that on the balance line betweenn
purchases and payoffsi
3915indifference looks neither thisl
way nor that:
our help is the call of
indifference that says
come where there is no
3920need of help
and have all the help you need:
so we rock (and roll) between gratitude
and terror (burns the cheek)
so we commend ourselves to
3925what is to be and what must be
so we celebrate dome’s day, the
big theatre, we came to see
and so we quail
at show’s end, the going back
3930into forgotten dark,
&nb
sp; the stripping off of illusion’s privileges:
the sleep beyond the
edge of the deepest sleep
•
3935my fears of the
piling up of too
much fluency
in high-rise temperature were,
I think, ill-founded
3940for though the radio says it is
now 42
the drips from the garage eaves
slow winter down:
you could write a sonnet
3945between one drop and the next
•
insecurity of registration in
a terrain measures the
potential, that susceptible
3950to disposition or re-disposition,
but to the extent that potential is pure
potential, with not a skimming
of announcement or definition,
it is nothing, who needs
3955potential: and yet who does
not, not need “give”, border
or boundary stone
relocateable: if you could,
for example, set poetry off
3960into 10 orders of this and
that, subsidiary systems spelled out, lifted into
interpenetrative connection
with what is perceived to be,
you could call it preserved
3965territory, a public or private
garden, identity certain:
but poetry resists this, yielding to erosion,
horse manure, bird droppings,
pine needles, the wind, moss,
3970bracket, bract, stone of change,
a troublesome, marvelous garden:
fertility inexhaustible, a milling:
After the Dissolve
After the dissolve,
under cedars and black and blue
3975spruce,
hemlock thickets,
crescents of coverless
ground where
if pheasant eat grass
3980pheasant can
plick chilly uprights of
green grass
or sort through the
vegetal remains, rubble for seed or
3985seed-like knobs,
clusters, or pods, roots, or
whatever
contributes generating to
the possible: but now
3990my class over for today
traces of white airiness
mean-sprinkling are expanding
into hard lightness
again, temperature falling,
3995new snow on old
melt-rinsed-to-ice snow
limited visibility
yield ahead
yield
4000stop
frost heaves
merging traffic
at most dusk
bill of goodsthe ringneck
4005deepdown cleanas if reluctant
I saw enoughto fly up to roost
of the realwalks about
to flee andon the meltshade
found enough unrealunder the cedar,
4010to return tohis feet on the
see the realground for the first
time since midDec: he walks elegantly,
slowly, now and then bends
to peck:
4015of course, he sleeps
on warm legs and feet
but all day every day he’s
snow-plopping barefooted:
scouring ugliness
4020and bathing beauty
my friend thedrover
poet is nooversold
longer attractedoversoul
to anylover
4025center of whichmover
he is notshover
the attraction
A Sift, Sprinkling, or Veil
A sift, sprinkling, or veil
of snow came
4030last evening sun after dusk
but ended soon:
today, though, is bright!
I got up at 6:30 to turn up
the heat and the
4035east was brightening: oh,
I said, the sun may come up
this morning and now it is
bursting pointblank against
the thicket
Structureless Rage, Perhaps
4040Structureless rage, perhaps,
pure energy of motion, volition, lies
alongside or moves under
and upfloats appetite: blah, blah:
an energy that we should haveone with no
4045been put here among these community has
bounties and possibilities,only the world
crippled with these walls and
spoons:
rage then flares into fear
4050that resentment has destroyed
our chances with the good
makings, the father dispraised:
it is a circumstance
medicine cannot surround or
4055work preservingly to the core
of: we must be and be
destroyed at once: rage and
love, fear and love, these
work themselves
4060out so that we become
accredited lovers and fearers
with no loss to either wing:
with no cancellation into
boredom or indifference:
4065harsh: harsh: with the
fate-like calm acceptance
that no other mix could keep this stir:
in a bush’s
fine division
4070the sparrow lights free
from the hawk’s broad shoulder:
tie one on:
another matter:
there is not
4075at the momenty
one single flakee
of snow ona
the garage roof:
a warm day again up to 45,
4080good old February
and there are wide circles
of dark ground under evergreens
and oblongs and funny
strung-out clustral darknesses
4085under groves, along hedges,
the woods in untouched natural color
but it’s gray again
(it’s gray again
like clay again!)
4090uyyllggu ugyu lygl
glugyuly yllgguuy
Tell What Will Not Tell Direct
Tell what will not tell direct
encompassingly:
the bindings of avoidance
4095gather terrain
manysided and cushioning,
should the direct route of
the direct saying emerge,
should the furrows of
4100circumference, hills
and dells, the wild,
off-the-mark talk,
lead to the very place unspoken
standing out where the stand
4105must be taken,
avoiding avoidance
go out of your
out of your
way to help
4110others
help others
but watch it what you raise into
strength may suspect you of
strength withheld and raid you
4115down and out loose, windy
since before day
and all day
the wind’s rolled billows across
us, the soundlessness,
4120rising roar, crash,weave is what it is:
muffling, suckingno matter the wisdom,
against the houseperception: the truth,
and thisyes, but only because
with the sky gray gray asattendance to truth
4125before as usualenlarges complexity:
well but even so it’s goodbut is one wave of the
weather for Februaryweave balanced by an
equal & opposite: that
great weather’sis important: is
4130destruction, though:everything stressed but
the blue dry highin its proper place:
radiant inanitionis consideration
shrinks brooks to crispobserved in the
routesdispositions: not an
4135burns grassailing net but
upholds dustadequate weave
find reality
find duplicity
two bows of a single knot
4140my feelings are caught
gauze in a strong wash
with the prevailing snow
and full moon
nothing prowls through here
4145at night
without prowling declarations
raccoon prissy
used sway
Spread It Thin
Spread it thin
4150zip it in
give me a ring
go back up for a lay
(better laid than never or up)
today continues the tropical
4155extravaganza—up to 45,
the circle of under-cedar melt having
widened halfway across the
yard and the pheasant pecking here &
there significantly
4160an interim free of spring
madness and summer dangers
a protectorate of warmth
midway winter’s wars
bees body cells of the animal, hive
4165today you couldn’t get a sprig
of hemlock to wiggle
where yesterday
bounding sloped green
surfs
4170permanent as breaking
entanglements: when the wind
does not arrange to have
tongue, much is tongueless,
as great distance
Dark Day, Warm and Windy
4175Dark day, warm and windy,
light breaking through
clouds
coloring the sides of tall
furrows, thaw decaying
4180snow, the wind stirring
time up to a rush, I come home
from work midmorning
dark with contemplations,
that the infant finds
4185his hand unopened
and the old man forgets
his has closed—that rondure:
I sit down at the piano
and try the “Fuga 1” in The