by A. R. Ammons
then easy as pie you will be
able to make lots of tomatoes
4665and I think this girl got the
point that a Platonic form is one
thing and a piece of ass
something else
and nobody with that kind of
4670awareness will stay puzzled
long or talk to teachers
queer for tomatoes
enough horse do for today
ltho prhps ct shrt
The Temperature Rose 15 Degrees over
4675The temperature rose 15 degrees over
the sunless, unaided
night: clouds like freight
cars packed the heat in
here and like tarpaulins
4680held it in place: high
winds today will change the
pacings and placings, only to add heat
to heat: high
winds shake out from scruffy
4685snow-disorganized bushes
crosslimbs, tangles, and
dead twigs and comb every
long branch out into its
separate space and possibility,
4690a ruffling and swaying
that brings cleansed motions
to high alignment!
rhythm is the spreading out
of sense so that curvatures
4695of intonation, gestures of
emphasis, clusters of
relationship can find disposition
and placement within the
enclosing identity of the sense scope
4700(as metrics eats
away at motion
it loses its identity
and becomes like motion)
metrics aside, though (and
4705why not, though relevant) much
of the power of motion resides
in the reliability (see dict.)
of the repetition (al fine
senza repetizione): at some point
4710in the whole
scope of an act
of congress, encouraging
trust, there ought to be a
plateau, a plateau before the
4715peak: it needn’t be a flat
plateau: it can be building
at an angle into buoyancy:
but for this part of the act,
a regular rhythm or a regular
4720progression (generally
accelerating) ought to be
established as the highest
feeling comes on stressful
entering or unstressful
4725withdrawing: but aside from
the regularity of duration, timing,
between stresses (c’est à
decir, a poem or novel must
achieve identifiable motion
4730as the highest contour above
its many motions): it follows
from the reliability of these
stresses and durations that
the pleasures that lie ahead
4735are available, can be reached,
ought to be entertained:
reliability gradually
accelerated could then explode
into huge releases of, umm,
4740expression, into dissolving,
stressless gliding, unwrinkled
calm
expression through issuecreelo o no
is not too badcreelo o yes
4745if clusters of plurality
balance counterbalances:
that way, all expressions
are tolerable but
meaningful change is slow,
4750an undercurrent forming past
calculation in accuracy:
the unwilled will
will the future
more truly than the
4755willed will:
10:10 a.m.: it has cleared
up sunny and warmed to the thirties:
the snow’s not rushing into melt
but clumps have damp edges: one thinks
4760the buds and flower-clusters
have swelled but actually one
has only thought of spring
and noticed the buds for the
first time: they’ve been about
4765so big all winter:
prey bolts, whines
but overtaken is pulled down,
dignity of design
forgotten in dust and the
4770fastest heart beat, grace
of motion
broken down into dinner
(have so many things to do that you
rarely do them)
4775//5 p.m.
my first walk to the brook
this year and though
it was only 15 minutes
including taking out the garbage
4780it was exhaustingly delightful
the brook by the way
by the way ay ay
is sassy
up to roaring
4785the water melt-muddy with
road runoff (salt, ash, cinders,
& gravel) and cutting gullies:
good to see a streak of water oozing
in caterpillar ripples across
4790the dry highway and to notice
farther up
the forsythia thicket letting its
holdings of groundsnow go
I would love to get the poetry just
4795the way it happens, the way it comes
on, heavy and thick like
a thunder tangle or empty as high
blue, weaving, stalling,
a little bit of all the
4800progressions including the
unstirring:
hunthigh
wildass
on the walk a fart worked its
4805way loose
probing through like a variable
long balloon seeking
till
wind to wind it broke free
4810so generous & satisfying
As for Fame I’ve Had It
As for fame I’ve had it
before I’ve
had it: meanwhile,
others grow vast on
4815very little
(but it has
by wise men
often been
spoken: less is
4820more or
less more)
while the more
I give the fewer
tangles of
4825attention to me
unwind
I suppose I’ve
worried too much
about the outbreak
4830of destructive
clarification:
when most folks
are in such confusion
any slight light
4835falls into far illumination
in darkness will we
heed too much
the twinkling of a tiny
twinkler when on the
4840mountain
chasms, gulfs, ravines,
ledges and weighty slides wait:
to be made of steel!
so bullets and aches and
4845pains and sorrows
the sorrows of knowing and
not knowing and witnessing
bing off you
that would be so fine
4850provided you did not
remain stiff and
uneducated
meanwhile the day has been
beautiful from sunlight binging
4855right off the horizon
through bright to now 3:15:
not as warm as yesterday but
warm enough, 40, 45:
poetry has become an outing
4860(outage), church social, a picnic of
huggy self-embracing, small hopes
and a tremendous capacity to bear
up under daily disappointment,
no mail, no state funds, no
4865f
ed funds, no city or county
funds, no scholarship or fellowship
today, no
subsidy on this issue, no
programs for the public
4870or public schools this week, no
improvement at all, I’m sorry,
we can’t offer you a
reading engagement this year,
no, not now:
4875take up slack
choose cheese
When One Is a Child One Lives
When one is a child one lives
in helplessness, in terror
of arbitrary force, and in the
4880fear of death
when one is young one lives
in helplessness of the
passions, in terror of the
ultimate vulnerabilities, and
4885in the fear of death, passion’s
opposite
when one is grown one lives
in helplessness of the webs
of demand and responsibility,
4890in terror of failing, and
in the fear of death, the temptation
when one is old one lives
in helplessness, in terror, and
in the fear of death
4895a windy, almost flashingly
changeable morning, the
clouds ripping across
influxes of light, that moist
blue in the clouds, temperature
490050 but failing, the willow
yellower, perhaps, than
usual, or more noticeable
against the rank clouds
instability is a loss into
4905motion but the best integrities
move, the coming out
of “sense” from sound
progressions: the
“flow” on the court to a swish:
4910crows sit in the thicket
hushed mainly in the noon
cloudiness:
when the great geese
fly over
4915the crows appear strange
as if separated into their
contemplations
most anything, stopped, falls
apart: motion
4920is the world’s glue
holding-together
but time eventually underslips
the whole thing
it is so lovely, the world,
4925so full of change and death
how can we find ease
in the uneasy
stability and calm
in the rushing
4930where is our stay
that is in a holding
higher
than motion’s formings
here, we know a stillness that will
4935not work, and, there, a
stillness we can’t stir from:
hold on to your self and your things
as long as there is
hope of holding: then swirl
4940loose into the mercy of others, set
your sights on having nothing,
staying nowhere: rest home:
who lets go needs not even
the need to hold on
4945he is free with nothing
which is in to everything,
these strange and comforting
contradictions, emollients,
ointments, and
4950soothing sanctions for the lost:
swashbuckling bushwhacker
the weather cooled and calmed
into 4 o’clock
sunny, nice
4955I look outbang bang
the windowyr’re dead
but the onlybrush your teeth
thing comingand go to bed
is another
4960tooth out
if I hadlanguage says
more fight inwise and
me theresobering things
would be lessbut in
4965runreal binds
nobody reads
I picked up lost wood undersores run
the elm yesterday afternoonscabs
limbs airy with light rotstay put
4970bark expanding to separate
speckled white with decay
high winds trim the tree
into the continence and
security of calm
4975frijolillo
Cloud Strays Rounded Up
Cloud strays rounded up
in a windy direction before
dawn, a hustled, rustled
clearing
4980as the stone buildings at the
university get older
life seems more and more
like whitewater over an
architectural rapids
4985slope soak
seeps (spews up)
through a
highway chuckhole
late at
4990night and
freezing through
early morning
builds up ice
which
4995when dawn brings out
the cars
grinds fine
under the tires
and looks
5000like a bucket
of dumped
gook
a curiosity to pedestrians admiring
the sunny morning
5005newlyweds: honeyback guarantee
can your father stuff it
the Rangers can’t
seem to do
anything in their
5010own end
something outside the bedroom
maybe a shutter
burrs in gusts and
another thing, an electrical
5015attachment, squeaks at the
corner of the house as if
someone were squeezing
a bird or turning over on a
spring
5020(at nigh on to three the wind
has died down but the
temperature has gone right on up to
sixty)
tulip leaves are up
5025green spears of lilies show
an inch of daffodil is
up
the hollyhock clump that was
aleaf under snow
5030having lost those leaves now
to naked frost
has unfolded held small leaves
precaution freed from caution
maybe the Lord troubles
5035people’s knees so they
will pray short and get on
with what must be done
//it’s getting late &
we had a shower
5040(enough to lay the salt
and silt on snowroads):
Bernie’s coming to dinner & Don
couldn’t quite get the
backboard up on the face of
5045the garage and I have pulled
out old spirea stalks and
picked up sticks till I’m
pooped nevertheless let’s see
if we can approach the
5050brushpile principle: now
a brushpile is by nature a
place to throw things
but you must be careful
when you throw armloads of
5055this or that on the pile—
some pieces will slide
down and off the pile or you
will dribble a stalk or so
of something just before you
5060get to the pile
which is only to say that
in normal usage
you will start to blur the
line between the brush pile
5065and the periphery
this should not be permitted
because pretty soon you’d be
kneedeep in junk before you
could get to the pile with a
5070load: right:
principle: be sure to police
the periphery of your fucking
brus
hpile
or you will wind up with
5075nothing but a mess,
an undifferentiated junkyard:
is that what you want:
do you want that:
lines sometimes help the mind
5080take steps from
one thing to another
possibly ascending steps
to the tall place
where nobody
5085walks around
leap year
It’s Half an Hour Later Before
It’s half an hour later before
a spring shower
gets all the way down
5090to hemlock ground
last night it rained easy
all night till dawn the rain
got white and
the dawn world, stained this
5095or that, came up white
coming up on white
they’s a limit, he said:
she cracked up,
mother nature’s response
5100to male weaknessdomination
and all morning up to now
heavy stuff, white and sticky,
right on the rain line,
has been falling in a
5105calmness no tree quivers
winter trees aren’t good
winnowers: nevertheless,
fine branches snatch flakes
and big branches take
5110single ridges: the chaff
hits the ground
but the caught
turns to lit melt beads
that light up
5115trees in a different light:
march one andmarchone and
in the clearin theclear
thicket highchoiredthickethighchoired
grackles grate squeak,gracklesgrate squeak,
5120dissonant asdissonantas
a music schoola musicschool
not much verse today but we
got the backboard & hoop up