by A. R. Ammons
will no knowledge of loss be in it
and in the wind no wailing.
1968
Sight Seed
When the jay caught
the cicada midair, a fluffy,
rustling beakful, the
burr-song flooded dull but
5held low: the jay perched and
holding the prey to the branch
as if to halt
indecorous song pecked
once, a plink that did it,
10but in the noticeable silence
proceeded at ease
and expertly to
take this, then that eye.
1978 (1984)
Negative Symbiosis
Without linkage or
ravin living
couldn’t
last: however
5far through
changes
the gnat wrestles
the bulby
high
10evening air;
however far
into the
dark the worm
rubbles
15under the root,
life takes a
bow,
gives
the go-ahead:
20even the
rattler,
his neck
gagged with
fur,
25trims up
the world so
something
tiny can
come
30through.
Citified
You can turn goats loose on an island
and forget about fences: your
chickens can graze away from the yard
and not stray: your horse or cow can
5range wide securely: the land
ends in all directions, and surf marshals
the shore tight: but much as an island
prevents escape it welcomes entry and no
eye can watch the round at once: glance up
10at the horizon’s flat line
but what on the island’s
other side is oozing or clamoring ashore,
a sea novelty or a pestilence of
demonstrable mouths: your horse
15could screech, your cow low, your goats
whirl, huff, and stamp, the unfenced
becoming the line of defense, alert line,
at least: and guineas, if you had any,
could chatter day or night to the unusual:
20but roundly enclosed just so
roundly vulnerable, you might as well live in
a single small direction, splinter, among others’
fractures and have to look nowhere but ahead
except of course occasionally to glance behind.
1974
previously uncollected poems from
THE REALLY SHORT POEMS OF A. R. AMMONS (1990)
To:
Phyllis Ammons, Ingrid Arnesen, Cynthia Bond, David Burak, Augustus Carleton, Roald Hoffmann, Phyllis Janowitz, Steven Tapscott, Jean West
praise and thanks.
And in a very different mood, but still with praise and thanks, to the memory of my longtime editor and friend, John Benedict (1932–1990)
Weathering
A day without rain is like
a day without sunshine
Hype
A pollen
fly makes
so much
of sounding
5like a
bee because
he has
no sting.
1988
Over and Done With
Continually is continuously
from time to time
and continuously is
continually all the time.
(1986)
Cousins
Hornets nesting under the weatherboarding
drop by the window: I think them
catkins the wind’s picked from the birch nearby
then notice they drop
5funneling centrally from expanse:
mind alters agreeably to convergences home.
1966
Equilibrations
If you walk back
and forth
through a puddle pretty
soon
5you wet the whole
driveway but of
course dry
the puddle up.
Second Party
I learn from the lake,
whole, composed,
whose shores thrash
wind-songs, that
5I might trouble
you with an edge of
praise: I
stand by you
as complete as
10you have made me
and praise will allow.
Digging Wonder
Immediacy’s stone
has
outlasted
every other
5stone
Tryst
I’m to go see you tonight:
birds that know where to fly
are loose under my ribs:
your eyes fly here to my mind’s
5eye: I dwell in them:
what if I’m frozen
_________
when I see you; what if I burn
completely up: the birds
may break out and go
10too soon; or, too bad
if my self flies to you
early, and I can’t follow.
1966
Success Story
I never got on good
relations with the world
first I had nothing
the world wanted
5then the world had
nothing I wanted
Glacials
In the geological rock garden
split boulders
lie about as kinds and ages,
a hundred million years or more in
5many frozen solid:
dusty thaws flow
steam-loose from the surfaces and
wind on the way
at last, the wind mixing
10old and current time
in mixings beginning and
ended, time unbegun, unended.
Stoning Stone
I put down
the splintered ax
and in the
fury of failure
5attacked time’s
stone with
tears: the stone
holds, but tears
soften the stone
10of my striving.
Substantial Planes
It doesn’t
matter
to me
if
5poems mean
nothing:
there’s no
floor
to the
10universe
and yet
one
_________
walks the
floor.
1985
Settlement
It snowed
last night
and this
morning no
5track in or
out shows
on the
cemetery
road.
Deaf Zone
Last night’s
drizzle’s
this morning’s
rushed
5brook:
the ledge roars
so,
look both ways
crossing the road,
10the
brook’s passing
louder than cars’.
Scarecrow
Nature’s undoings
let
the maple rise
close in on the young dead elm,
5the new
branches paralleling
trails along
the old so
that the young elm
10stands dry, held
upright in broad
becoming�
�s long going.
1986
Filling in the Dots
Pigeons, thirty-five in a
speed, break
over the lombardies
just so
5as, missing, to
outline the row.
1977
Figuring Belief
Praying answers prayer:
in the deep spells
of inquiry and hope,
a self
5enabled to rise again
to the compromises
and the shattering caring
forms
Crinkling Trails
Snow’s our winter brightening,
the sun far away and low
and, anyway, held away by clouds
the color of everything else:
5but at night blank fields
disclose the tiniest traveler,
the source of light too diffuse
to find or hide from or to
hide any side of a thing or
10action, mouse rumpled in a fluff
of wings, black roses, leaf radials flung
up from undersnow by
daylight’s digging crows.
1985
Cracking a Few Hundred Million Years
So the plastic conduits for the new
phone system could be put down,
the big-clawed, wheeling
forehoe dug a trench
5into the original shale-lyings,
soil mixing trench-side with broken stone:
_________
this morning, after last night’s
downpour, the ground smells
sour, a scent no human form was here to
10know when the shale went down.
(1990)
Soul’s Seas
Tears for the long-gone times
and for the little time left to go
are the buoyancy whereby
the butterfly ship
5gets wings to the wind and
flies, all energies exhilarations.
Clarifications
The crows, mingled
powder white,
arrive floundering
through the
5heavy snowfall:
they land ruffling
stark black
on the spruce boughs and
chisel the neighborhood
10sharp with their cries.
Celestial Dealings
The heaped hemlock
boughs hardly
sway in the
profound cold,
5snow, anyway,
too quick to miss.
Waking
The oak grove’s
a lake on
stilts:
underwater boulder-boughs
5define
standing clarities:
in gusts waves
nod,
plunge toward breaking.
1985
Glass Specialty
The redbird, nesting
in the nearby
yewbush, has found
a fluttering rival in
5the garage window: pecking
as at a nectar of hatred,
he (not a hummingbird)
thrashingly sustains
himself before his image:
_________
10weakened to the ground, he
comes back up, the ruffling
rival there every time.
1989
Pedagogy Agog
The smart gain
knowledge
and learn to
express
5themselves to join
the
world of power
where
it pays to
10know
little and say
less.
Touching
The spangled, mauve
hydrangea heads, having
nodded over upsidedown
with summer weight
5and summer storms
now have their
_________
bottoms topped
by fluffy cones of snow
heavy enough
10to make them
going down
go on down.
Planet Actions
The spider, dashing from
marginal boughshade
to cross the driveway
hits the hot macadam
5and, legs dancing,
scoots back for
the cool: brother,
I effuse, hot
weather we’re having!
Worky Shallows
The sun’s angle’s so
the creek’s slow’s
dim, flat, clear
but down where a shoal
5breaks the flow thin and
fast—shattered into curves
and runlets—
the sun blinds everything
white with action.
Still Frame
The wind played
down frost-still,
sunrise brings three
crows
5into the nearly
empty sugar
maple, their
pitching and flapping
jarring a touch of gold leaves loose
10that
sprinkles down as if
picked by a breeze.
1984
This
time will wash
away
so
clean not a
5cry
will
be left in
it
Spring Tornado
Trees lash, warp:
the low-down
drops over the ridge
valley-deep through here:
5terror pops out
like shoots or buds,
just the sky to be
left whole.
1968 (1984)
Bottommost
We circle the sinkhole
the coil spins in:
when the speed is close and sufficient,
a tube of nothingness
5opens down which
attracted objects mill exodus.
Time Spans
What lightning
strikes
in an
instant the
5boulder hums
all year
Crow Ride
When the crow
lands, the
tip of the sprung spruce
bough weighs
5so low, the
system so friction-free,
the bobbing lasts
way past any
interest in the subject.
Roundel
When unity, having found its way throughout,
draws all things into a
single bloat, manyness slices
the innermost layer and pushes the skin away
5and there as before in all its profusion and
differentiation is the world again, hail, sleet, mist-ice, snow
Calling
Wind rocks
the porch chairs
somebody home
That Day
You came to see me one day and
as usual in such matters
_________
things grew significant—
what you believed, the way you
5turned or leaned: when
you left, our area tilted, a
tile, and whatever
opposes desolation slid away.
Poetry to the Rescue
You must be
nearly lost to
be (if
found) nearly
5found
Ah
When the forehead drains
and the limbs akimbo
freeze
so that the body can
5be carried as
by stubs a log
the true sigh is not
yet but when
&nb
sp; ground-packed
10the tendons slip the
joints, the muscles run,
the bones chink loose.
(1987)
Pebble’s Story
Wearing away
wears
wearing
