by A. R. Ammons
here comes another warm
spell up to the sixties:
lately the temperature
has been up & down on
5615a four-day cycle,
teens to seventies,
really rolling differentials,
spiraling through dragging
nordic or tropic skirts:
5620let’s not get into that:
cunt is disturbing
today if it goes to 45
caterpillars run down outside
may nick away in the sun
5625the lilyshoots
though
or also,
deeply puzzled,
rush out firm
5630to sixty degrees
but bend stain-limp
to the teens
scare crows
raise money
5635field mice
they said I ought to get
a stereo because
when from seventy you subtract
fifty it only leaves
5640you twenty mo’
for stereo
(lessen yall gits lucky)
you do do do, too
The Wife’s Plaint
5645There may be
more room on
the outside than
on the inside but
there’s more
5650room on the
outside outside than
on the
outside inside.
may hernias
5655rot in your
soup! the disgusting
husband said:
may
cocksuckers ululate on
5660your doorstep! the
precious wife replied:
may the worms
in your round worms
need worming & may
5665a great Swish
swallow your Knob!
french-freud
Cunit
Cunit
close as i can
5670come without being there
cuneus is okay and cunette
fellow said he got his
tongue hung
in one
5675once (which I never believed)
and said whenever he did
the rest of it
started in to pecking on him
is what he said
5680till he couldn’t tell
whether he was coming or
going
and his whole tongue got
covered with red-peckered
5685welts like you never seen
cunnythumber
slurp slop
I never met a man
with a dirty mouth
5690(delicacy governs true passions)
that had any real
respect or deserved any
everybody well-adjusted
to sex keeps his mouth shut
5695the elm is darkening
with mere
budbead
I saw this morning
come out on the porch steps
5700and on a leaf of periwinkle
a beadblack bug
hemispheric so as
nearly to stick flat
to leaf or slate
5705two red eyes
one on either wing
It’s a Wonder the Body
It’s a wonder the body
goes on making
things not thought
5710well of, saliva, for example,
wondrous devising
containing
water, mucin, protein, salts,
and a starch-splitting
5715enzyme
that has been accorded little
common knowledge and small
applause, like great servants
who flawlessly
5720disappear
into their work
eyes spread around
inside scraps,
tips, filaments of
5725brand new or newly
worn attraction
the bigeye belly
aphids that eat up theis
roses arelove’s Polyphemos
5730as pretty
as rosesmaggots like
twice as green,undertakers (too)
their dew honey,work dead stuff
and their petals flybut are unlike
5735livelier
a gray warm
day with sprinkles
not met on concrete
I just went for a walk by the brook
5740(high brooks are interesting,
the collections aimless
above the slope drop)
geese again
Today Was Like Vomiting
Today was like vomiting:
5745all morning and until
midafternoon
the wind scoured the trees
like the dry heaves
blustering dust and pollen
5750till finally it brought
the clouds up
and by four the smallest
rain came with a quieting
wind and then later the
5755true tensions found themselves
and wind and cloud
delivered the shaking
spouting flood we’d been
waiting for
5760now there will
be some ease
the birds can settle
we can have dusk,
dinner’s smooth time
5765because winter cut a deeper
trench this year than usual
I feared last year’s
mockingbird might not make
it back or through
5770but there
down in my neighbor’s
orchardlike yard
I saw the bird dive
spread those barred
5775rounded-off wings
and splash into trilling song:
I saw that yesterday:
you know how a robin can get
variable in a pellucid dusk
5780and sound remarkable
but not quite make it, as
the mockingbird
can hold no vocal candlestick
to the woodlark
5785sound’s most beautiful song
Showers
The grass is
green by
the time the
5790clouds are blue
how much
more blowing
will establish
spring
It’s April 1
5795It’s April 1
the willow’s yellow’s
misting green:
adding white maybe
tonight or tomorrow
5800Canadian air 30 below above
the clouds has
settled into the midlands
and is moving eastward
this will bring
5805ground temperatures
within range
of the structural
flare-out snow
a look-see
5810slightly more direct
(- (-shut-eye
($ ($American dream
(* (*34" bust
great logs
5815dragged to the fireplace are
with ashspoon dipped away
earthworms are only
little long people
I’m Unwilling
I’m unwilling
5820to write this
morning but
things
keep nudging me
to sidle with
5825them into
words,
what is it, even a tension
in the mind
wants to play
5830itself
through the lit stage
wing to wing,
across and through
severe illumination,
5835burning every crick
and hue
o
f the hidden out;
to be announced!
pronounced!
5840shaped, made, attended
to, to have occurred as
an item of what was,
to be a thing that is
the bloom shed of the
5845maple is
spring’s
first fallthe maple itself
a falls
the milling fall making
5850of bloom parts
to hold through winter
and open
to spring’s first warmth
and fall
5855(so early this year!
midFeb)
the syrup keeps
rising through the trunk,
wooden fountain,
5860and always from
the replications and
rondures, slope heights,
of the tree
spill
5865the bloom parts
the sent
wide reaches of pollen, the
lightgathering, dismissed
leaves, hunting, spinning
5870seed
the tree,
holding to one place,
moves as far
as possible
5875abroad, away, away
to other holdings
it is not for the poet to
speak the speakable
that which long known & said
5880requires no energy
of finding or forming but to
murmur, stammer, swear, and
sing on the edges of or around
or deep into the unspeakable—
5885the unspeakable, silent sorrow!
the unspeakable, silent joy!
there was a time in January
when the light was barren
moving in blurs and glows
5890between clouds and falling
on the snow-and-ice-enameled
hills, the streaks and
thickets
of ice-brush
5895like ink brushwork
ornamentation:
the ridge, I thought,
moves, flows, and
I was held by a power
5900beyond all but silence
to contain
a joy inexpressible,
inexcusable
standing not away or at an
5905opposite pole but
in the midst of which
grief
like high icy ghosts of
lombardies
5910slow-swayed!
things arranged
at their centers so
that when we
grasp them
5915they turn slightly
(like a dishwasher
dial) and go into
another tone or slant
or cycle or flatly
5920from kind to kind
quandary lies centrally in balancing wings
so much so that as we draw near, the directness of
our sight blinds us to the full facetal radiality
so we are not likely ever to dissolve the knot because
5925we work against ourselves when we hope to for if
we did, behold, the world and we would stop: how
grateful we must be that as we reach to take the
much desired in hand it loses shape and color and
drifts apart and must be looked for all over again
5930so are we shoveled
forward half unwillingly
into the future (where futurity is lost)
praise or railing—
these two the sky equally
5935takes up unlimited
and lets vanish
The Sky Clabbered Up with
The sky clabbered up with
blue-clabber clouds
and
5940(meanwhile the temperature
falling off)
the whey-gray whey rose
shutting off from earthly
view the fine white
5945cumulus heights (yogurt)
but still whereas and
whenever he did
the cold kept coming and
pretty soon drops
5950of rain
lost sharp swift
substance
and blurred their way
down white
5955(white down)
big clumpy snow mixed with
rain, one thing popcorn
and the other popcorn popped
there’s no accumulation
5960anywhere
on hemlock, garage, lily
shoot, yew, nor in crocus
cup, nor forsythia bell
whenever it did & any
5965flake touches anything
it crumbles, shrinks,
a little bit
of nearly nothing
A Single Fact
A single fact
5970inadmissible into
sound generates
billows of volubility
whereas said out
it would turn
5975small as
a drop of rainI looked down the
brook at the outblanking
high glaze
running water gets when light
5980falls (into) against it
and thought how polished
water lofts ripples stone still
almost
and about how the dullish gold
5985gets down between the
radiant-gray ledge shoulders
and holds color over each brook-step
ledge to ledge down the hill
until of course (!)
5990everything narrows
and disappears going down
into the burial of itself
slope-lowering
burial from my sight though
5995for others beneath me
it makes sights and tunes
It Does Not Rain in
It does not rain in
air-conditioned rooms
and the fan-wind blows
6000(dust weaves in the rooms
looms and glooms
of loom-gloom) leaves
pittering across
dome-locked, skyless pavilions
6005are grocery tickets or nasal
tissues
(the brown
bushbrush
here
6010though hazes greenly
dense)
snot rags
I feel like a master:
nothing happens here that I
6015do not wish and
everything responds
(when we arrive at the
center
a wing-gate flies open
6020and turns
us into new material
out)
like water in
eddy
6025about to find
restful rondure
then sliced
from its widest
circumference
6030downstream
cold
currents settle
from polar ice
bottomward
6035like falls
motion holds moving—
(the ripple I spoke of the
other day,
now the eddy,
6040but also the millennial
deep bends &
sweeps of rock forms
and sea currents)
there’s ice under ice in
6045Antarctica so old
it’s lost to count
but is still pressing down:
the earth, mantle-deep or
crust adjustment,
6050is responding to that:
I see into so much every day
(sd the obstetrician)
my breakfast nooky quivers
mostly cloudy at sunrise but
6055now turning clear blue in
spot
s and a turning up and down
of light (we may go to
McDonald’s for lunch!)
One Loves
One loves
6060absolutely andin wax museums
forevermen have
anything else iswax balls
something elsebut in fire
museums
6065I know only oneballs of fire
thing to talk
about (poetry)
and that
covers everything
6070(even on a moist morning
midMarch, the street
showered still-wet,
flocks of birds foliating,
defoliating shrubs and
6075trees, the cardinal singly
chirping, even on such a
morning, the word, pliant,
suppliant,
wrenching shinnies up the
6080ash-damp heights
and higher cries out in the
cindery desert for an
answerer)
headstone-shade snow
6085melts slowly
it still can’t quite clear off
or get cloudy—
dwelling mixed
in between
6090some of both and not much of either
The Miltonic (Miltownic) Isn’t
The miltonic (miltownic) isn’t
milty or come
to think of itall you can do
tonicwith a day like today is
6095eitherslice it and eat
it, cake
blue, radiant,
frill green, also
the maplejust-right cool
6100bloomparts, cast millings,
have shrunk into meal, so
dry, granola, forsooth,
that stepped on they turn
snuff-dusty, a
6105prepared, engineered reentry:
I do not wish to speak too
highly of nature where only
what can work works,
only the possible possible