by A. R. Ammons
known
to the bright sweets
born of the dead:
7515for us, it is a life, a
death, okay, take or leave it:
we
hang steadfastly on:
fresh out
7520kingdoms of light answer
to the fact
Variable Cloudiness Windy
Variable cloudiness windy
and cooler this afternoon
with showers occasionally
7525mixed with snow flurries
•
when I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head
7530unfurled
and wind bloomed the parachute:
the air-head tugged me
up,
tore my roots loose and drove
7535high, so high
I want to touch down now
and taste the ground
I want to take in
my silk
7540and ask where I am
before it is too late to know
•
big aurora last night, a beam
of light, then an aurora, with
7545a crown!
the end of the world!
every day
in a million eyes
Unisex
7550These days there’s
only one sex and
I am neither one
a blue cloud went over and ice
poured down like hail for a minute
7555this combo day mixed January
and May, sleet and tulips
On Walks I Go a Long Way along
On walks I go a long way along
a side-shallow, hardly a ditch,
dandelions grow right down
7560with grass (separating out the
stones) into the pebbly bottom
and I think if I
were struck down there
it would not be so bad,
7565perhaps; some weed stubs might
dig into my cheek but I understand
that: the stones might rustle
a little, dry, if I stirred: and
grass might half-tickle my nose
7570but I am familiar with grass:
I would not like being
held down long but
after death finished, the grip
would slacken, birds would
7575fly over indifferent as a corpse,
a worm would find a bit
to stir here and there,
the sinews would loosen and
bone spill from bone:
7580I am familiar with dandelions
between my fingers, slugs
cool in the sockets’ dark domes:
today was so beautiful, hazy
blue, cold, cold nectar in
7585the blossoms, the leaves limp
cold: fellow said to me this
morning a man has been known
to mow his lawn and shovel snow
here the same day in May
7590penetrate and get the
ball down low
One Trains Hard for
One trains hard for
inadvertency
the terrain falls away:
7595love like a flowering quince
or crabapple bush nowhere
erupts: local green
mixes with stone becoming
on the periphery
7600casket gray: though this is true
(I care nothing
but to tell what is true)
I am astonished
with gladness
7605to find the brook clear,
the ripples dark-backed,
scriptures of light
working the slate
floor,
7610flat scales opaque with revelation:
a grackle stands in the water
and drinks from between his feet:
I can hardly
forget the sound of the
7615nameplate that squeaks and clangs
on Mrs. Day’s mailbox there
when the wind blows:
I bend over clasping my
knees and the old fellow,
7620friend, frizzled schnauzer
runs out of the driveway
and whines grievous
pleasure
stretching up toward my face:
7625he knows me: we were
friends last fall:
I am myself:
I am so scared and sad I can
hardly bear to speak
7630and yet delight breaks
falls through me
and drives me off laughing
down a dozen brooks:
nothing, not anything, will
7635get over into the high land
and while some may die
as if community-ward
none, not one, will miss
unpeopled oblivion:
7640(except that in not imagining
oblivion one
cannot enter it)
what a dancer the stem of the
whirling down will be!
7645I am free:
I feel free, I think:
my chains have healed into me
as wires heal into trees
the saving world
7650saves by moving,
lost, out of
the real world
which loses all
Will Firinger Be Kissed: Will
Will Firinger be kissed: will
7655Cézanne’s house be itself or
melt into the mountains: will
art have liberty from government
help: how will things
proceed: how will other things
7660proceed: (provide, provide):
modern industrial debris!
acid thunderheads! nitric, sulphuric
rain! salamander
eggs burnt out in farm ponds: Whitman,
7665the midwestern flues, effluents,
Carl, spill crud into the processes,
the lakes, ponds, and ditches of the
northeast and who knows what
the northeast does: Walt,
7670the greatest country
isn’t wide enough to
dilute greed or bridge it:
put a drop of
water in baby’s soreeyes,
7675acid will scour th’infection out:
this billowing age enlightened
with smoke, our eyes open(ed) at last
to airy cinders: if
salamanders die,
7680flies will stifle corporate suites:
what do those little
critters with dust-fine
wings do on a drizzly damp day
like this
7685(hold their noses)home ice
the dance is the narrative of
figuremotions the dancer
inscribes on the memory
the dancer is the dancer (stylus, pen)
7690that is one way how
the other way is never
I’m tired of loving alone
roots go to water
leaves to light
7695pulling the trunk hard
between them
mist-drizzly cold
the clouds brush hillbrush:
the horizon slips
7700through
If Walking through Birdy Trees
If walking through birdy trees
you stop, several still birds will burst
into flight, your motion, conserved,
communicated into lesser, faster speeds:
7705the more familiar
hemisphere, that if having been still you
move and birds or other animals
startle and fly, why I have
not decided what to make
7710of that: make something of it:
think it over and out:
hold the same thread through numerous terrains,
transfigurations, etc.
and see to how many
7715oceanic possibilities a strand
applies:
not to hold onto the strand you have is to seem
dismissive, cutting, as if you
liked not all of reality’s
7720clothes but only
certain patches or
threads, whole cloth, a
cheapening: no matter what
intelligence went into making
7725the maze if
the one thread leads you out
They Say It Snowed
They say it snowed
a few days ago
a bit, one of
7730those rainy cold
days when skinny droplets
flurred into feathery
fluff,
whitening streaks
7735out of the dismal
downward descending
the lords of volition slice
down Hanshaw
in the after midnight (close
7740to dawn, now) hours,
toss beer cans, cigarette
packs, liquor bottles into
the ditch without a thought
for any nature than their
7745own: and specially into the
bushy border by the brook
the alarming discards of
passion fly: the early
day, when passion is spent,
7750pent, or bent
shows the brook circling
silver canfish:
the lords of volition care for
the brooks that burst their
7755breasts, the churning and flowing
there, the spills and stalls,
urgencies not of matter, wind
ripplings
I pick up after them and find
7760the slug has made a home under
the gumwrapper or grass is
holding and hiding a
Schaefer can
filled with the plump, pulp
7765bellies of mosquito larvae:
the lords of volition
caring for their own
natures care for nature
around them; they expend,
7770satisfy, create: I pick
up, tearing their doings out
of time and context, for a
neat ditch with clipped banks
lunch reservoirs on our rears
7775overlookto set our feet
look overon symbolic rock,
solid space—
that is the heave
I am so backwardhow many
7780in my correspondenceshould I
I have to stand in lineput you
to hear from myselfdown for
we(l)come
Fall 1975–Spring 1976
(See the notes for each
section’s date of
composition.)
* Betelgeuse
HIGHGATE ROAD (1977)
These poems are dedicated to my son, John, with all my love.
Shuffling
A centipede, the many legs,
will go straight away a way
and cut
back at an angle acute
5to the course as if
to avert calamity
but then,
suspecting
his move anticipated,
10loop round completely,
reversing his way,
disheveling accidents and
probabilities into
cool shambles ahead.
(1976)
Enterprise
A fish, fin
ichthy about the mouth, prim
or
dially
5neat, translucent hinges
extending toothless
rims,
fans
his gills
For Louise and Tom Gossett
After a creek
drink
the goldfinch
lights in
5the bank willow
which
drops the brook
a yellow leaf.
1974
Significances
After brief heavy
rain at two o’clock,
he listened at
the wood’s edge
5and could tell by
the clusters and sheets of drops
that some drops, summarizing
the leaves they’d
fallen from,
10were larger than
others or had
fallen farther,
and when the wind waved
wide like a conductor,
15a rustle of events,
cool, keyless, spilled:
he listened,
his body sweetened level to
the variable nothingness.
1971 (1977)
Release
After a long
muggy
hanging
day
5the raindrops
started so
sparse
the bumblebee flew
between
10them home.
1975
Modality
A grackle
flicks
down from
the cedar
5onto
the shiny
alley
to see
if the
10shower softened
the garbage
bags.
Meanings
1)
a grackle lands on a honeysucklebush
limb which sways too deep
(arching like a crossbow)
and sidling up
5corrects the spill
2)
the hollyhock summer-weighty
leaned over nearly out
of its roots but leafless now
stands winter-stiff to the wind
3)
10the pheasants leave tracks, an
abundance, in the snow:
icicles grow for the ground
Handle
Belief is okay
but can do
very little for
you unless you
5would kill for
it in which
case it is
worth too much
to have or not
10worth having.
Speechlessness
Coming to the windy
thicket I
said a brook
must be here and lay
5down to listen
to the rustle but
fell asleep:
when I woke
the wind
10was empty and
the brook had
turned into a poplar.
(1976)
Gardening
I’d give bushels of blooms
to bank my hardy cover
into your cushion mums
1968
Blue Skies
If I leaped
I would
plunge over the
pinetops into
5the deepest sea
1974
Camels
I like nonliterary,
uneducated people,
beach riffraff:
they are so aloof and
5unengageable: you
can rope them with
no interest of your own.
Immediacy
On the way to
the eternal sea,
I looked for coins
in the gutter:
5looked at the sea,
a deep summary;
returned along
the gutter
looking for coins.
Recording
I remember when freezing
rain bent the yearling
pine over and stuck its
crown to ground ice:
5but now it’s spring
and the pine stands
up straight, frisky in
the breeze, except for
memory, a little lean.
1975 (1975)
Early Woods
I think
I have
a tick
on my
5tock
Enough
I thought the
woods afire
or some
house behind the
5trees
but it was
the wind
sprung loose
by a random
10thunderstorm
smoking pollen fog
from the
evergreens
North Street
I tipped my head
to go under the
low boughs but
the sycamore mistook
5my meaning and
bowed back.
1974 (1974)
Reading
It’s nice
after dinner
to walk down to
the beach
5and find
the biggest
thing on earth
relatively calm.
1975 (1975)
One Thing and Another
It is one
thing
to know one
thing
5and another