The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  Dusk Water

  Looks like, the rain run off, the brook’s

  pane-deep again and

  over the flat shale-squares

  hardly blurs to move:

  5bushes overhang (small trout floating

  leaf-still in hollows) but

  I can see when

  the catbird lights in, his skinny

  feet cracking the mirror,

  10and then follows so much

  shattering and splinter-flicking! which

  though when he

  stops wet to look around,

  melts back, all the rag

  15beads and quivers and the small mist,

  to double-bird fine glass.

  1979 (1980)

  Pet Panther

  My attention is a wild

  animal: it will if idle

  make trouble where there

  was no harm: it will

  5sniff and scratch at the

  breath’s sills:

  it will wind itself tight

  around the pulse

  or, undistracted by

  10verbal toys, pommel the

  heart frantic: it will

  pounce on a stalled riddle

  and wrestle the mind numb:

  attention, fierce animal,

  15I cry, as it coughs in my

  face, dislodges boulders

  in my belly, lie down, be

  still, have mercy, here

  is song, coils of song, play

  20it out, run with it.

  1981

  Singling & Doubling Together

  My nature singing in me is your nature singing:

  you have means to veer down, filter through,

  and, coming in,

  harden into vines that break back with leaves,

  5so that when the wind stirs

  I know you are there and I hear you in leafspeech,

  though of course back into your heightenings I

  can never follow: you are there beyond

  tracings flesh can take,

  10and farther away surrounding and informing the systems,

  you are as if nothing, and

  where you are least knowable I celebrate you most

  or here most when near dusk the pheasant squawks and

  lofts at a sharp angle to the roost cedar,

  15I catch in the angle of that ascent,

  in the justness of that event your pheasant nature,

  and when dusk settles, the bushes creak and

  snap in their natures with your creaking

  and snapping nature: I catch the impact and turn

  20it back: cut the grass and pick up branches

  under the elm, rise to the several tendernesses

  and griefs, and you will fail me only as from the still

  of your great high otherness you fail all things,

  somewhere to lift things up, if not those things again:

  25even you risked all the way into the taking on of shape

  and time fail and fail with me, as me,

  and going hence with me know the going hence

  and in the cries of that pain it is you crying and

  you know of it and it is my pain, my tears, my loss—

  30what but grace

  have I to bear in every motion,

  embracing or turning away, staggering or standing still,

  while your settled kingdom sways in the distillations of light

  and plunders down into the darkness with me

  35and comes nowhere up again but changed into your

  singing nature when I need sing my nature nevermore.

  1973 (1982)

  Motioning

  My father did not

  get a resolution

  to his problems: he

  was taken down

  5from them: a

  vessel broke

  _________

  in his brain, and

  he lost half his

  capability: he

  10walked less and

  asked no questions:

  sense returned

  to his eyes and

  with one hand he held

  15the other

  up: that was

  stopped when the

  central

  heart, of which there

  20is only one,

  ticked off: my

  father, I could

  tell, had

  a lot of questions to

  25ask: but all

  motion was

  removed from the matter.

  Love’s Motions

  The old woman, toothless

  as an infant, rocked

  back and forth slowly

  on the cot, figuring

  5outwardly the binds she

  had come to, but smiled,

  _________

  hassling, at the son-in-law,

  stuffed hard-fat in the

  corner chair, his mouth

  10breezy with superhighways,

  tunnels, interchanges,

  the grayed daughter

  obviously concerned but

  chipping in about the

  15cloverleaves and the hard

  kids left behind: the doctor

  came in, sat down beside

  the old woman, and took

  her hand to count: she

  20looked at him and calm

  and new confidence came

  over her: the doctor said,

  “Here, try this walker”:

  the old woman stood up and

  25nudging forward held on with

  both hands: “Look a there,”

  she said, “wonder if

  I’ll ever learn to walk.”

  1977

  Helping Hand

  They told Miss Lou

  it was her heart:

  she said somehow I

  _________

  didn’t think it

  5was my heart—

  but went on

  believing them when

  the colon

  was removed and

  10while her skin sheered

  several shades

  of white

  till they rushed her

  pure white away for

  15blood and then she

  thought maybe it was her

  heart for the pints

  of sudden blood

  troubled and stopped

  20it: she

  called help, help,

  the assault crumbling,

  sheets of dark warping

  past her: hold me,

  25she cried, not against

  going down but

  to steady her through.

  Debris

  Say something and then

  question it nearly

  out of existence: or split

  _________

  something cleanly down

  5the middle, but make

  one side as if

  wrestle and beg for

  the opposites and complements

  of the other, the

  10whole then standing

  incredibly, a shambles

  magnificently held up:

  or drive a huge force of

  argument through the

  15parties’ exceptional manglings

  till hardly a quibble

  remains whole: let

  the quibble speak.

  Coming Round

  Ships turn into lows

  they can’t outrun,

  the concision of the oncoming

  a holding rightness, and

  5tigers evade into threadlike

  trails till

  evasion snaps shut

  then turn straight

  to the bothering center:

  10but I run on

  _________

  ruffling the periphery,

  the treadmill’s outwheel,

  declining center

  or any loss of it

  15and
no longer

  crying help.

  1972

  Dismantlings

  Snow holds two

  feet deep on

  top of the big

  round yew,

  5providing underneath

  a dome for

  cold-lean birds:

  and even when,

  the bush stirred

  10by kicked-up

  gusts,

  the dome cracks

  into floats,

  showboats,

  15the birds hang

  around the slow

  of the passing there.

  Down Low

  Snowstorms high-traveling,

  furry clouds blur over

  our zero air:

  wind steams (or

  5smokes) fine snow

  off the eaves, settled ghosts

  trailing up and away:

  the pheasant, too cold to

  peck, stands on one foot

  10like a stiff weed.

  We, We Ourselves

  So nothing holds—

  forget it, I already

  knew it—or only

  what turns and cleaves

  5to itself and that

  is no holding in

  a larger sphere—and,

  anyway, nothing not

  broken holds, the other

  10reaching across

  the break to secure the missing

  but at least one

  hold might stay

  if the other gave

  15way, a temporary

  illusion of holding

  not altogether illusory—

  but then literally

  nothing holds—it

  20does—under the

  deepest fall the

  rondure of the ultimate

  sympathy, like

  a symmetry,

  25turns cupping in to

  the levitating explosions,

  of meetings, hallelujahs,

  upward drafts

  afterall

  1981

  Measuring Points

  Squirrels in the early

  spring ritual zoom, one

  after the other,

  winding round

  5the trunk and up out

  over the limbs, so fast

  they keep the whole

  tree bobbing for

  minutes: they

  10stop, scratch, and stop:

  they get the tree as

  still as their eyes.

  1975

  Section

  The branch sags low

  this morning with

  held rain:

  when the squirrel,

  5traveling,

  hits it it

  dips deeply but,

  shower and squirrel

  lost, woofs back

  10way higher than it

  was, a risen road

  righted thru trees—

  a squirrel’s spent trail

  1974

  Buttermilk Falls

  The falls slopes and a thousand

  shale notches

  and inch-ledge spills

  mix the water white—

  5so much speech of a kind,

  so much to listen to,

  differentials of tone and ruffle

  a roiled continuum:

  I sit down, draw a clear line

  10to disinterested attention,

  my white sheets &

  markers out, and

  begin to take it all down.

  Spring Vacation

  This snow’s

  swayed and busted open

  the fine-fingered

  bushes,

  5Lord, leaned over

  break-neck spindly yews,

  put mound

  bloom on the spirea,

  starved the pheasant

  10fence-skinny,

  _________

  done us all

  in with flu,

  and’s still

  coming down:

  15clouds, sweep out:

  sky, break up:

  give us some way to get

  to somewhere to go.

  1974

  Meeting Place

  The water nearing the ledge leans down with

  grooved speed at the spill then,

  quickly groundless in air, bends

  its flat bottom plates up for the circular

  5but crashes into irregularities of lower

  ledge, then breaks into the white

  bluffs of warped lace in free fall that

  breaking with acceleration against air

  unweave billowing string-maze

  10floats: then the splintery regathering

  on the surface below where imbalances

  form new currents to wind the water

  away: the wind acts in these shapes, too,

  and in many more, as the falls also does in

  15many more, some actions haphazardly

  _________

  unfolding, some central and accountably

  essential: are they, those actions,

  indifferent, nevertheless

  ancestral: when I call out to them

  20as to flowing bones in my naked self, is my

  address attribution’s burden and abuse: of course

  not, they’re unchanged, unaffected: but have I

  fouled their real nature for myself

  by wrenching their

  25meaning, if any, to destinations of my own

  forming: by the gladness in the recognition

  as I lean into the swerves and become

  multiple and dull in the mists’ dreams, I know

  instruction is underway, an

  30answering is calling me, bidding me rise, or is

  giving me figures visible to summon

  the deep-lying fathers from myself,

  the spirits, feelings howling, appearing there.

  1981 (1982)

  SUMERIAN VISTAS (1987)

  for Phyllis & John

  1: The Ridge Farm

  1

  The lean, far-reaching, hung-over sway

  of the cedars this morning!

  vexed by the wind and working tight

  but the snow’s packed in, wet-set,

  5and puffed solid: the cedars nod to

  an average under gusts and blusters:

  yesterday afternoon cleared the

  sunset side of trees, the hemlocks

  especially, limbering loose, but

  10the morning side, the lee, sunless

  again today, overbalances:

  the grackles form long strings

  of trying to sit still; they weight

  down the wagging branchwork snow stuck

  15branch to branch, tree to shrub,

  imposing weeds

  2

  last night, the wind clunked

  the icy heads of shrubs

  against the house—

  20long night of chunk-money spilling

  3

  a poet hands me his poem and says,

  this is not my true voice, only a

  line or so:

  good, I say, but he is

  25disappointed,

  having found a self, if still reticent,

  in himself he likes or would like to like:

  but is his true

  voice more interesting

  30than the one in the poem and, anyway,

  isn’t the one in the poem, if untrue,

  truly untrue:

  I know what he means:

  he wants to write by the voice, to

  35separate out the distinctive

  in himself, a distinctive, and write to it:

  that is not the way, the way

  is to say what you have to say

  and let the voice find itself

  40assimilated from the many tones and sources, its

  predominant and subsidiary motions

  not cut away from the g
atherings:

  but that is passive, he says:

  no, I retort (for effect), it is passive

  45to do the bidding of the voice you have

  imagined formed: freedom engages,

  or chooses not to, what in the world is

  to be engaged

  4

  if nature could speak

  50would it have something

  to say right where it says nothing:

  that is, be like me, reticent,

  patient, waiting and slowly the

  progressions will find progressive gears

  55(even now backsteppings are being wound

  forward) and the wind seek key other

  than the eaves-key: nature would say,

  be still, that is to say, indifferent

  like me, only to say so would

  60motion difference:

  probably this is why nature says nothing—

  it has nothing to say

  5

  knowledge, perception, this action

  is so endless it might well be

  65avoided, as one does not care to take

  down just because it happens what happens, the play

  of light on an inlet, bay, sea:

  worked so far in, knowledge mingles

  with its source

  70so as to give up reefs, shoals, shores

  of resistance, to unwind

  the embracing curvatures of line,

  shelf, lagoon