by A. R. Ammons
the weather may improve: she says,
6585you know those sunny rooms,
enclosed porches, that lie
off the sides of kitchens,
those long rooms with
lounge chairs and hanging green
6590blades and tongues of
cactus and big-eared begonias:
that is what you have caught,
has caught up with you: come
in: the afternoon sweeps
6595through here on a good day:
madam, I say, the long
boxes of empty afternoons, I
had anticipated fierier affairs:
come, she said: you
6600thought you saw something:
it was nothing:
I, he said, going in, am
barely able to conceive . . . or
concede belief
One Desires the Cutting
6605One desires the cutting
glassy edges of
nearly-wordless poems
but one yearns
for the openness of context,
6610too, so as to tell
what urn or bottle broke:
restore nothing:
we want nothing back:
contexts (enclosures) show
6615what ruin we’re wrecking in
or passing by,
passers-by or guides
the flawless evidence favoring
death leaves us
6620unconvinced
and we’re ready
on no evidence
to believe we live forever
flasherlaserlasher
6625slashermasermasher
in long views
even great traditions
are often bulges
from a main line
I Wonder if Pagan Is
6630I wonder if pagan is
unfairly defined in the dictionary,
a shade too much lean to bacchic
as if it were not serious or moral, or
as manifested by early man,
6635nature-boy innocence, not true:
look it up:
suspicions confirmed!
oh, well, it takes a while
to turn or bust up
6640a current
(without affecting the climate)
here is room
in this long poem’s thickets and byways,
flybys, big timber, high marsh, and
6645sea lane, for one to turn the wrong way
around this hedge, streamfork
or that, boulder,
pavilion ledge
and take on
6650unnoticed a different coloring
as if one had come
surprisingly suddenly from
a pure place or belief:
if you cannot choose,
6655here I will lose (hide) you,
wind and unwind you till you
will be a found astonishment: you
will be sitting on a stump
by a brook and a beautiful woman will
6660come by and say, who are you,
and you will say, I am a new man:
(then you will have completed
pilgrimage, and begun):
let us not patch up anything:
6665let us have it or tear it out:
one or two will get lost
perhaps in a ravine and
forget it is not Eden:
they will concentrate
6670one on the other: nature
will align its major
forces through them and every
morning shove itself into
their mouths, a fresh
6675apple!
my outrage, my anger is
oceanic: it is free as
my verse: lovingly I empty
myself of it: lovingly I write
6680out my loathing:
I would sell my book to
millions to find one to love
slender willowy
in a waterfall
Rage Spells More of My Words Right
6685Rage spells more of my words right
than any other feeling
the big red sun just set
under two vapor trails that
diverge from a crossing in
6690the sky, the planes so high
they can’t be heard—but
I have found, I think, a
copy of the northern hermit
thrush and I’ve been trying
6695to read it—a frailer, less
fluid, less crystalline-breaking sound
than the southern woodlark
but still plaintive,
liquid bell-clarity, glade music:
6700my crazy rage, depression,
my insulted silence, along
with all my dissolving talk,
my playing tensions out while
others twist believable
6705tensions tight:
all nothing! when it goes it
leaves
behind inexpressible beauty!
the happiness of lingo
On This Day Noteworthily Warm
6710On this day noteworthily warm
fossil fuel is 3¢ a ton or vat
the tough sweet element in
man . . . the newsman, no matter
how he feels, comes up
6715with news, the weatherman
with weather, the
bread&milk man doesn’t come anymore
the forecaster for today
forecasts
6720einen thunderstormen may
blusterbufferoomen through:
gossamer-in-the-wind glint,
(three sheets)
trees-in-the-breeze sneeze,
6725spruce worms, little greenies,
dangling, squirming
say it was 93 downtown
yesterday: about as hot
today: but I think
6730there’s cooling
in the evening breeze
Some Nights I Go Out to Piss
Some nights I go out to piss
among the big black scary shrubs:
the tinkling stars
6735don’t seem to mind:
cruddy crudestars & stones
ruddyrudesilent & naked
odd that where no one is to have
anything, not even his
6740own life,
having is the game:
that where no one is to win
but indeed lose losing
itself
6745the game is winning:
and where not a single love,
mother-child, lover-girl, man-son,
is to hold,
love settles in:
6750odd, odd that as the days go
by so rich, so lost, one fool, trying to save it,
wastes the day
contradiction is a center
turning around makes
6755another place to go
nasty century! whose
enlightenment
fills the air with smoke,
darkens the day
My Structure Is, Like the
6760My structure is, like the
bug’s, external:
rubbing up against others, I
acquire form: mingling
my speech with that of others,
6765I annex scaffolding:
like a man in a well, I kick
one wall, brace my back
against the other, to work my way up:
inside, I am too soft to point
6770a piling, my hard walls
wet sheets on a line:
Phyllis and John
have gone off
for a few days,
6775which they need, I suspect,
and I am,
alas, alone:
(terror, my pet lion)
the catkins
6780(small lions)
; hard-sharp have
lengthened fluffy-long and waggly:
it’s better to be tough
and free than
6785to bawl and chain
I notice on my
walks that when
I move everything
moves!—
6790so much seeming
to the one motion!
pollen burn
had a voice and
couldn’t place it
6795my neighbor’s dog (big shaggy
black&white) died late last
fall in cold’s fringe
and was buried in a
small clearing in the hedge:
6800this spring
I’ve expected the ground
to spew, corruption
work up,
but the mound has given
6805notice neither outward nor inward:
there’s a slope-lawn down by
the brook whereon a young
birch frilly in early-girlish
leaf seems to have been caught
6810raining, catkins icicle long and thick:
girlish or boyish, in case one
is one and the other, other:
up the street a bit, a man
has set out two birch, one
6815three-trunked and the other four-
sometimes I twist out a roll
of nearly-dry white snot and it
unwinds some in my fingers
so disgusting
6820star stump stone stare stub stem stob
post oak
white oak
ghost oak
so much works flawed
6825it makes you think
perfection not one of
nature’s hangups: the
crow gets by with a feather-gap
or so in his wing,
6830the robin is full of worms, and
I have teeth missing trailertrucks
ride through: still, nature
doesn’t lose count: it puts
away
6835everything it brings to life—
to perfection:
You Think of the Sun That It
You think of the sun that it
burns to burn
and that the soul for its own
6840brightness burns
but the sun burns right to
the brim of necessity,
its floes dipping and
plunging to averaged effect,
6845sun spots, flares, in-feed
of interstellar trash, outflow of
radiance through whatever
cloth of radiance, an
historical burn, one-way,
6850out with surrounding
accidence wide open, stray
chunk pulled in, suns
driving to meet at a fast
sharp point, so many necessities,
6855so many sides
that the sun cannot burn for
a reason for any reason but
to burn
as the soul burns
6860to show and shed its brightness
being is the summary
of incalculable interpenetrant
necessity
motion
6865itself is the fine
tuning by which the earth
flies neither into space
nor the sun:
however
6870fine and open the adjustments
though
the structures of motion
exceed all strength of steel
woven, stainlessly wound:
6875rock whereon much
is founded will
split but motion
is
polished by millions of years
6880(the foundation
in nothingness, deeply
based, towers highest)
I thought, to water the bees,
hornets, wasps, &c., I would
6885put a bucket under the faucet
outside that leaks so little:
but I thought if I set it flat
I will have a full bucket,
the brim brimming wet all
6890around: so I thought I must
slant the bucket (but not
enough to exclude the drop) and
leave a part of the
brim-arc dry so the things can
6895light: but what, I thought,
will hold a bucket at 45 degrees:
everything hassles me: the truth
is I do not know
how to water wasps: a good
6900try, though, would be the
slightest slant, a mere lean,
to dry off a crescent, a
fine moon; then,
the things could land on the
6905high rim and walk as deep as
need be into the refreshing
flood: intricacy has as many
ins as outs:
(the good part about leaning
6910the bucket is that if the bee
fell in he would gradually
mosey over to the lip-spill
where his legs would catch
rimbottom: then he could loft
6915and shake his wings and
tiptoe to safety)
if people who can think of
nothing to do would
water bees
6920they would find themselves
working with the principles
of the universe, a mind-blowing
and consciousness-raising
experience, I suspect)
6925
short-winged swallows
#
using round nails
6930turkish birds
enslaved turkish birds
ain’t that purty
6935
longing for deconstruction
some other time
6940frameworked
if I could write a poem a
thousand pages long my point
would be established: every line
delightful but all you wd have
6945to do is lift it to discover
its weight and irrelevance!
6950unevenness had begun to
establish itself in my lawn
when I got out the mower
and, for the small, let
a lot of room in from the top
6955(so much for income tax)
sweet clarity
reconciled at
great depth
regular rational
6960discourse is good for
taking care
of highways, pick up the trash,
trim the hedges, oil the
cracks, while the imagination
6965works on giving birth to some
other form of travel
am I law and outlaw, pope and
pensioner, sage and fool,
writer and reader, male and
6970female, am I, sir, a small
town (in microcosm) where
this one and that one is
sometimes mayor, where at
any rate, government
6975concerns all:
it’s five o’clock, brightly
cold and somedeal chilly: I
have just awakened, having,
after cutting the grass and
6980getting sweaty, fallen
asleep, sweat-chilled, in the
big chair: I am hungry: I
do not know whether I will go
downstairs and scramble a
6985couple of eggs, then have a
bite at Neil’s later (where
I’m invited to be with Harold
and others at 7:30 but where,
since I was too nervous to
6990attend the afternoon sessions
of lectures, I may not go) or
go to McDonald’s for a Big
Mac (I think I’ll do that)
and have a b
ite later at Neil’s
6995or not have anything till I
get to Neil’s—most unlikely
I already came home at 2:30
and fed my city a fresh
banana dunked milky in frosty
7000flakes: I should not be
hungry: but it is cold and
I cut the grass: and Phyllis
and John are not here, and I
feel the need of something it
7005is so bright:
I do not care what anybody
thinks of anything, really:
that is to say, I have not
found the flavor of orange
7010juice diminished or increased
by this or that approach to
Heidegger or Harmonium: I
believe the constituency of
water has remained constant
7015since the Pleiades:
I don’t think that any
attitude I take to spider webs
will faze flies: have you seen
Stanley Fish in the flesh:
7020words sweep around but then
just miss to form their own
world: think what a
caterpillar thinks: he holds
the universe between his
7025horny toes and eats it in
worky swatches!
sublemonade
sublimeade
not only can we not look into
7030the sun but it sweeping out
its light as if eliminates
what it illuminates: that
the center of light
should be blind! well, I
7035must go off hamburgerward:
(delicious)
on full alert
massive layoffs
hurt his chances (a strong
7040case for continuing its
existence)
positive developments
(receptive to such a move)
normalize relations
7045totally fallacious allegation (lie)