Bosh and Flapdoodle

by A. R. Ammons

the nice old men left in empty houses or on

  the widows who decide to travel a lot: we

  think the sun may shine someday when we’ll

  drink wine together and think of what used to

  be: until we die we will remember every

  single thing, recall every word, love every

  loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to

  others to love, love that can grow brighter

  and deeper till the very end, gaining strength

  and getting more precious all the way. . . .

  Get Over It

  I guess old men aren’t really good for nothing:

  they can cuddle, shuffle, and look

  about for where it all went: harmless, they

  are attractive, gently innocent, on park benches

  or subways, or on the slow side of streets:

  women are reassured by them; they are witnesses

  without danger, guardian angels: out of the

  game, earnings free, they are what they earned

  before: they hardly compete at all: their toothless

  mouths need no upkeep, no reconstructions,

  no root canals or extraordinary measures:

  it doesn’t matter if their piss-burnt pants

  stiffen up or if they seldom shave or use much

  hot water: they are wonderfully inexpensive:

  unless, of course, something goes wrong: they

  just hang out on corners or in alleys, useless,

  apologetic, inexcusable, supernumerary,

  invisible among the seeing: what good is a mess

  of stuff on its way out, nearly out: get on

  out, you might say, you’re taking up room:

  but old men are good examples to the young of

  what becomes of things: working, loving,

  buying, living the dynamics, many can look

  down the steep gradient of the slope to where

  the rubbish edges the river and then reaffirmed

  they can look back into the lights and run

  along to do their parts: when I started this

  piece, I intended under the guise of praise

  to pour the world’s contempt on old men, but

  I wasn’t clever enough to modulate it gradually

  the way, say, Shakespeare moves easefully

  through changing weathers: but at times, old

  men will look up at the world, raise an eyebrow

  and smile a small smile hard to read.

  Tail Tales

  Old men drain and dread and dream and dress and

  dribble and drift and drink and drip and

  drone and drool and droop and drop and drown

  and drowse, dry, and dry up: I won’t show my

  obvious hand and do anymore with this: I can’t

  stand to be noticed for just carrying something

  out: except, of course, at a carry-out or if

  the chamber pot needs to be carried out: but,

  I mean, just to do something, without the risk

  of running into breaks, barricades, burdens

  or barristers—what lift can such drudgery

  sustain, no, what lift can sustain such

  drudgery: I was scanning the other day when

  I hit on this show with Alan Brinkley: I

  liked him so much, I went to the bookstore to

  get a book but all they had was the one on

  the New Deal, which I didn’t care for—I

  wanted to read him on something slightly more

  philosophical, summary, or theoretical: but

  he was so quick to catch on (not that it’s

  probably that hard to outgrasp Schlesinger or

  Galbraith) and he understood the other points

  of view better than the other points of view

  did but still didn’t like them, didn’t prefer

  them to his own: well, you can see, if you

  add insight, gentleness, evidence to all that

  why I would get interested: I’m sure I

  demonstrate in my own practice a sheer flow of

  the viable juice, so no wonder I recognize a

  river of it in another: not that antiquity

  has perjured sense in S & G:

  they cut about them smartly: really valuable old men. . . .

  Fuel to the Fire, Ice to the Floe

  In knee boots men work at the street grilles

  to plunge flow through the leaves plugging the

  storm drains: what I mean is, it rained a lot

  and you know when it does autumn leaves wash

  down the runoff and get stuck in the drains,

  plug up the drains till the water backs up

  and elongates lakes along the street or fits

  nicely into concrete-boundaried corners: but

  if the language doesn’t caper or diddle, who

  cares what the water does or if the men get in

  over their boots: I have the same clogging

  problems with my gutterspouts (among other

  things): this guy put in a sieve to keep the

  leaves out of the pipe when the opaque sieve

  reduced the flow to zero and the gutters

  overspilled: I am a patient man and can—

  though just barely—afford some experimentation

  but after a while I’d just as soon move somewhere

  else, Arizona or the Sahara: I just can’t

  take it when things do not go right, although

  I patiently grit my teeth and persist in calm:

  trouble is it all breaks out at night, some

  kind of itching or bowel contraction or loose

  saliva: anyway, it seemed like a poetic

  thing to think of, the men in their yellow

  raingear and black hipboots looking down

  trying to find an open bottom to a pond, with

  it still raining, etc., you know.

  Suet Pudding, Spotted Dick

  All well and good for autonomy that it find

  its way into the full array of itself—good

  or evil: that it achieve (whether poem or

  self) whatever standing defense can carve out

  of imposition or inner resources can assert:

  but what of it if one thing, uncompromised,

  unassaulted by the world’s mixtures, stands

  out alone in the glorious testament of itself:

  what good is it if it cannot bend to use:

  is being, however fully realized, enough: one

  can be in oneself alone and each of us must,

  of necessity, so be alone each in the measure

  of himself: but only when one’s self engages

  other selves does whatever is apply: and what

  will application (wyrcan) to search out among

  the diversities of others a riding autonomy:

  an autonomy that will ride over, do what it

  can, invoke, say, justice, liberty, wellbeing

  for all (or many, or as many as possible,

  some?): hidden by leaves on the limber end

  of a twig all summer, the hornet’s nest is now, after

  fall, the only thing in the tree: except for

  a scrap of leaves blown in from the oak close

  by: but where are the hornets, are they in

  there: is there more endangerment in summer

  than winter notice: I hope the plague of the

  bee mites will pass this year: I sure did

  miss the bees, the honeybees, the flower people.

  Focal Lengths

  I’m largely a big joke: if somebody else

  doesn’t make a crack about me, I do: the

  burn center in me is too steady a place to

  dwell in: I go by there, throw rocks, and

  laugh my head off when the windows splinter:

  kaplooey: what kind of little nerd is doing

 
a little serious reading in there: what is

  this, a library: then, I roar: all that

  faked up type lining shelves like boot camp

  drills: what does it have to do with anything:

  did I take my bristled nest of humiliations

  to heart: what kind of dunce keeps a fire

  going like this: what do people mean coming

  to hell to warm themselves: well, it is

  warm: the fire, stoked by whatever, is truly

  burning: so, that’s the way I am: I just

  can’t keep it straight: people melt down in

  the heat sometimes and weep: I just don’t

  know what to do: I just jump-start my pickup

  and drive off: I just declare to goodness:

  but I know something about burning, myself:

  better laugh it off: better not believe it:

  better not think it’s real: it’s not real:

  it’s so cool: actually, it’s nothing: it’s just

  nothing: crack it up: make it go away.

  Sibley Hall

  The gingko’s so all-gold you want to put it in

  the bank, but the beautiful young girl having

  her sandwich on the steps of the art building

  said to me, it loses all its leaves at once:

  so much gold!

  Good God

  It used to flick up so often, I called it

  flicker: but now, drooping, it nods awake

  or, losing it, slips back asleep: I say,

  stand up there, man, but, you know, it’s only

  me, and it takes no threat to heart, so to

  speak: it’s lazier than a sick dog that won’t

  lift his head to sniff the wind: it has

  always amused me as a serviceable irony that

  the spirit, which is without substance, can

  move the flesh: a thought, a sight, a scent

  frizzing the wires of the mind (sounds like

  substance) and the thing, you know the thing,

  just reacts, warms, fills, lengthens, hardens

  without hands or lips, without touch: so we

  must think of the spirit as a matter of great

  force and be mindful that while it works it

  works wondrously but later on in life, say,

  the spirit may be willing and the flesh weak,

  as you’ve heard said: you could suppose the

  spirit at that point not very willing or it

  could come up with something: or perhaps the

  thing, long asleep, has fallen out of use: a

  day of radical separation, a realization that

  puts you back before the world began—alone:

  the walls of the grave your only embrace, and

  the soil you lie on all that lies on you: my

  goodness: fortunately, there are remedies—

  implants, injections, dirty magazines: the

  world is sometimes so well provided with 2nd

  or 3rd chances, we must be amazed at the

  thoughtfulness of so many applied to so wide

  a scope of possibility and give the pisspoor

  thing a chance. . . .

  Genetic Counseling

  You know how babies in kindergarten catch (or

  give) a new cold every week, and how young

  people in college, you see their breakfast or

  lunch spilled by the walkways, or you see them

  flash down the hall loaded with a bathroom

  urgency: it’s because these new people, their

  flexibility is so wide they have to take on

  the definitions of immunity, and their bowels

  have to adjust to the environmental influx:

  gradually, they settle in: you sometimes see

  old folks cold-free and nicely trained for yrs

  at a time; they and not-they have fought out

  a partial standoff allowing lingering peace:

  young people are green, tender, responsive &

  so delightful (usually): it takes time for

  them to become anything you can count on: I’m

  glad I can put, with all this talk, slosh back

  into the metrically-induced compressions of

  terrorist tightwads who’ve squeezed the

  tradition so lean so long: these neat little

  packets of considered richness, excluding the

  wasted grandeur of dull prairies and empty

  seas, so much ice plunging off Antarctica,

  these little tightly packed exclusions, what,

  is’t not nobler and more a liking of the maker

  to sprinkle hedgerows up and down anything,

  repeat krill astonishingly, fill up a sky with

  rolling rows of discrete white clouds (imagine

  what it would cost!), whaṯs the matter with

  dirt, dirt, and more dirt, and a little bit

  more: can one be big and rich: but what about

  the poor patch where only perking geysers can

  cough up a little green: oh, don’t mess with

  me: do I have to tell you everything. . . .

  Hooliganism

  Once (there was a time when) I was attracted

  to, if not attractive to, everybody, starlet

  and streetlet, athlete and bellybag: afire,

  I burned anything, including myself: kneedeep

  in ashen brush, even some simmering fagots, I

  tried to separate the heat from the flame but

  gave up, pouring it all into the love of a wife

  now nearly half a century old—the wife a

  little older: most of those old flames (sweet

  people) have flickered away except for the

  corner of my mind where lively they live on in

  honor, honorary doctorates circling their

  laureled heads—what schools they founded!

  taking what pains, with what tears, they taught

  me how, roaring possibilities and tenderest

  glows: love, love, one learns to love, it is

  not easy, yet not to love, even astray, leaves

  something left for the grave: burnt out

  completely is ease at last, the trunk honeyed

  full as a fall hive: when the light dies out

  at last on the darkening coals, the life

  turns to jewels, so expensive, and

  they never give the sparkle up: this was

  a fancy, and not half fancy enough and somewhat

  lacking in detail but ever true.

  Slacking Off

  You don’t put them in, they can’t stay in:

  calories, I mean: you don’t put them in, you

  don’t have to get them out: you can sit all

  day at the TV, a couch potato, and shrivel up like

  a stale french fry: you won’t have to exercise

  a bit, pretty soon a skeleton would look fat

  next to you: that’s a skeleton that died of

  thick bones from too much exercise: who won’t

  get close enough to the edge of definition

  won’t get the edge in “living on the edge”:

  why won’t some come to edges others can’t keep

  away from: answer me that: okay, I’ll do it:

  if your differentiation, so-called, is a

  similitude broadly applying why then your

  identity dissolves in happy safety with the

  group, crowd, nation, even continent, unless

  you’re away, say out of town or away on business

  or vacation: then you might find you had

  transported your singular distinction into the

  midst of a major otherness: mostly, though,

  as you would probably want to get on back home

  you would warmly and wholeheartedly identify

  with your likenesses or kind: if your

  differentiation is
poorly peopled, you may

  rub the majority abrasively, and it may be

  dangerous for you to show your face or unwind

  your genome: better keep your mouth shut,

  unless you can represent the growing edge of a

  coming time when, it may be, you can move more

  smoothly in and out of the circuits of grace:

  but if you come clean as an abomination, better

  snitch a helicopter and get the fuck out: the

  animals, you know, other than ourselves though

  much the same, are like archeological sites:

  we need to plunder their behavior to get at the

  roots and devices pertaining to survival on

  this planet: the lions, how they interact,

  killing, eating, mating, their disputes among

  themselves: and the orang-utans, our motives

  written simply, deeply, silently: even the

  bacteria, little hordes swimming this way and

  that together: a piece of fossil notable in

  me says hit it, git it, and git: but, of

  course, that looks out of place dragged out in

  front of our cultural conditioning. . . .

  Quibbling the Colossal

  I just had the funniest thought: it’s the

  singing of Wales and whales that I like so

  much: you know, have you heard those men’s

  groups, those coal miners and church people in

  Wales singing: to be deeply and sweetly undone,

  listen in: and the scrawny risings and

  screechings and deep bellowings of whales,

  their arias personal (?) and predatory at

  love and prey—that makes up mind for us as

  we study to make out mind in them: the reason

  I can’t attain world view or associational

  complexity is that when I read I’m asleep by

  the second paragraph: also, my poems come in

  dislocated increments, because my spine between

  the shoulderblades gets to hurting when I type:

  also, my feet swell from sitting still: but

  when the world tilts one way it rights another

  which is to say that the disjunctiveness of my

  recent verse cracks up the dark cloud and

  covering shield of influence and lets fresh

  light in, more than what little was left, a

  sliver along the farthest horizon: room to

  breathe and stretch and not give a shit, room