by A. R. Ammons
death secures us from
death, words slug for our redemption
always a swing and a miss, meanwhile
it’s balls & bacon as usual, conception
7050and decay, laughter and tears,
the explosive, incredible mix
Snow
Snowwons
mons
since we must die,
7055sweet completeness will
not have us wait in attendance
on our bodies
while workers fatten
and disperse and find
7060slick tunnels to
flight and the rich (or poor)
man’s table,
while roots explore the
forehead and settle in the
7065ears, while the burrowing
beetle swims through or
around the eye (like a planet)
while the water rises and
the body log
7070spins, the bottom-gazing
face: how, I mean,
nice that though we know this
we need not witness the
knowing of this
7075life, that can be death
enough, that we need
and know, so that as we
enter into death we slip
out of it
7080like wrapping off the
chocolate:
wooden boxes eventually “give,”
the rain finds a hole and bores
through, milling the bones and mound
7085gravel: on such a day of happenings,
those who love go here and there
four days of clouds, two days
of rain, the temperature
steadily falling, this morning
7090before dawn the rain ran into
deep temperatures that popped
it white and the spruce,
cedar, grass, roofs, and all
tolerable surfaces took on
7095the accumulation of white and
when everybody got up today
he had something to talk
about: from 93 to 30:
some of the snow lingers in
7100the cedar hedges almost at
the freezing mark: it has
changed from white to look
almost like water but there is
still ice enough to hold
7105it in the boughs, so it cannot
fall, held water, islands of
snow:
then there is the presence in
the head, a figure that never
7110speaks, immortal, apparently,
who, even in one’s death, has
nothing to do with what is
taking place and will not credit
its reality, too bemused for
7115assent or concern
grit, flakes, sleet, fluff,
all day the snow snowed in
vain
nothing but green in the
7120grass nothing but leaves
in the trees
It Snowed All Night Snow
It snowed all night snow
like pear-petal snow and has
snowed all
7125morning, skimpy flakes,
solitary, wandering schools:
the clouds, just discernibly
clouds from the general gray,
move on in a brisk
7130wind: the buttercups,
leant over, have surrendered
their sturdy forms to limp
wastrelness: the birds have
vanished into bushes:
7135what has come over you
if a rope were tied between
two posts
there would be most play in
the middle: coming out
7140of the middle, the play
diminishing, one faces
the attached fact, the hard
narrowing and shortening,
the play gone out:
7145who who had
anything else
to be interested
in would be
interested in
7150the weather
we mill in a room where
a conveyor belt now and
then entangles and brings down
one who, mindlessly, is carried out:
7155the others mill
and scramble, touching bottom
lightly, getting high
on the archy:
verse the room’s ventilator
7160light showers soak my shoes
verse writers croak my nerves
hard feelings
you know when
something is wrong
7165how grateful you
have not been
how many
shocks of enlightenment
burn out
7170a tradition!
after I have been
myself enough I will
die and go
on being universe
7175modren friend when dil thou do
reaching from end to end
cripes that my bed were in my arms
and I in my love again
Drip Drip
Drip drip
7180truck it
in our galaxy alone
(billions of others)
extraterrestrial
noncelestial life
7185S P A C E
the reality man has lately
tried to conceive
in which, however,
solid ground,
7190scaffolding
ten billion people
may dance on the
pinhead of the earth’s
center
7195undercut
footings, literally, what is
our footing,
not rock, motion, space—
nothingness!
7200(and the realization,
tho hard,
that that
is the strongest
footing, providing most
7205options, the greatest
range of possibility) how
fortunate that we
did not have it
the way we thought we
7210wanted it:
the primate touching
down lightly on
the ground
now, three million years later,
7215ready to give up the ground
THE GROUND ERA
THE SPACE ERA
the heavens acquire another
side, a landing
7220both feet on the ground
no feet on the ground
there is an animal, louse-like,
but smaller, antennaed, grazing
the winter month of dust on
7225the bathroom windowsill:
I love a plant
I think too much
I bought it
I placed it by my bed
7230I think
I love it too much
a ray of sunlight just (11:44 a.m.)
broke through and hit
across the leaves of
7235my plant whose hunger and
pleasure I feel I think
some sit home and think
about their feelings but
others land elsewhere
7240the land grows peripheral
and less secure
and secure nothingness moves
centerward
my plant!
7245what is it sitting on,
the center of the galaxy,
a composition of centers
of galaxies!
the bedsidetable:
7250drip drip
the sky is drying
hot snow
the sky like water
standing in a rowed field!
7255the furrows of cloud pull
apart and show
the sky filling the ruts
&nbs
p; blue and clear
mucousit cannot snoo
7260vomitat forty too
gush
Some Fluffy, Long-Swaggly Catkins
Some fluffy, long-swaggly catkins
have fallen to the ground, heads
swung round in looped resentment
7265or resignation, fashionable cousins
to the earthworm:
the brook has moved into
higher flow, sustained by last night’s
slow-soaker: this morning
7270the sky’s rinsed
blue, the hazy blue of color informing
itself, interrupted here and there
by ranges of white mountains:
if, as appears likely,
7275reality is not a wit solid
but a dream another
head, perhaps, is dreaming,
why, then . . .
what difference does
7280what we think and say make:
have the mountains responded:
is there word from
the sea: has the sky
looped down to question us:
7285broadcast gathers coincidence:
people have
scoffed, perhaps,
because from my
upland upstate shelter I’ve
7290looked out on the universe:
but in time it will appear
mean to have looked out on less:
the grave quits
speculation:
7295feel the astonishment
of buried roominess!
a twinkledom in the deep!
roots
would coil
7300and nest
in the eye
sockets
why but
clapper-like
7305the hard point
of the catkin
unopened sways
a tip of weight
so the fuzzy
7310mechanisms and
gold pavilions
of dispersal can
catch and tangle
with the wind,
7315the ocean whose
currents find
otherness
I think I am sick with a pure
interest in beauty,
7320a joy skinny as a fountain
that erupts
through entanglements
for real loft before gravity
unfurls fall’s umbrella
7325the wind’s rinse over ice-enameled
hill-ridges! how beautiful
all winter, the light flowing
and riding, the dark sharp
lines of hedgerow! too
7330spare, so lean!
after sunrise this morning the sky
cleared and the sun
hit the windows with light,
the indoor plants standing as if
7335in celebration:
and all day has been
beautiful, the redbud blooming,
apple trees blossoming, so
many scents and colors, the
7340brown fingers of spruce
shaking dust, so much and
water trickling in the
ditches, trickling
disconcerted like ridge water
7345I break poetry off
I have not earned very much
I am not worthy of the
energy that winds up
spruce tops and floats off
7350into the air still winding,
also I am denied much,
this beauty, though very
beautiful, is an inconsiderable
feast,
7355a snack enlarged to
astonishment where love
has little meeting
My Father, I Hollow for You
My father, I hollow for you
in the ditches
7360O my father, I say,
and when brook light, mirrored,
worms
against the stone ledges
I think it an unveiling
7365or coming loose, unsheathing
of flies
O apparition, I cry,
you have entered in
and how may you come
7370out again
your teeth will not
root
your eyes cannot
unwrinkle, your handbones
7375may not quiver and stir
O, my father, I cry,
are you returning:
I breathe and see:
it is not you yet it is you
I Knew
7380I knew
if I
went for
a walk
I’d get
7385my feet
wet but
only so
I Cannot Re-wind the Brook
I cannot re-wind the brook,
back it up and make
7390it flow through again ten
times till
it achieves the highest
compression, the concentrated
essential, of being a brook,
7395brookness finally found and
held away from all brooks:
but the brook shoots muddy
with perfect
accuracy the morning after
7400rain and in
a dry season
tinkles clarity, the
truest music birds know:
I never want to throw out
7405the brook because it is
nearly dry or too noisy
so long as it
tells the truth, an
accuracy of all the other
7410dispositions, hills, marshes,
declivities, undergound ways
of the terrain surround, an
instantaneous, just summary
and announcement:
7415art is not nature
but the flow, brook-like, in the mind
is nature
and should it be
superhumanly swollen
7420to art’s grandeurs when the accuracies
(absolute) of nature please
suitably to our context: an
ear of corn too high or heavy
is not worth planting:
7425art too strong or weak
betrays the living man:
poetry that wrestles
down all but a few
has its holding: but
7430the people, where they
turn their attention,
that is humanity:
our chief light
will put out
7435its light by
first putting too
much light out
I should be buying something
I go on paying
7440spells narrow inif all is appearance
on sayings andit is still without
catch the feelingliberty for we must
say the exact air
of this & that mere
7445illusion
gardeners aren’t fairweatherers
for weeds work
the cold, damp, cloudy days
like weeds as
7450much as roses
and you never
lack for liking
Considering the Variety
Considering the variety,
nicety, formal hardness,
7455careful contours of things
(how sight is filled with
the apparency of these) one
wonders about the byways of flow,
not much yelling of change
7460noticeable, dead trees (live
housing—will vines start
to dead trees) standing
hard, sun- and wind-rinsed:
the rumor of flow, one
7465wonders if invisibility
suppresses that, wind, water
carrying on, rearranging,
both clear, sometimes muddy,
<
br /> dusty, leaf-shown: and
7470underground, a stirring,
melting:
is flux invisible to be
kept out of sight
or to emphasize the made:
7475would designed
finery lose its strut and hard
joyousness if it
lost majority: still, not an item,
not even the stones, has not been often
7480milled away and away, if come
back in a stone or divided
participating in many stones:
(the time at the heart of
stones is no greater, but purer,
7485than that of the wearing surface)
but whatever flow dissolves
flow also brought the
nourishment of, the great
spirits flow through our forms,
7490declaring themselves through us,
the freedom of sequence, the leap
from one to another, the
essential preserved:
but considerable lamentation,
7495though most scenes are quiet,
lamentation of the inexplicable,
lamentation against recalcitrant
fact, that though nothing is lost,
nothing, still the particular
7500is, that self or shape, so
carefully contrived,
crumbled, collapsed, its flow
lost in flow:
in this contemplation not a
7505wall, board, or splinter
yields: the alternatives,
side to side, are blank:
here, with breakdown,
gaiety, contrivance, and
7510immortality are sustained:
earth turns the bitter, sour,