by A. R. Ammons
go (what is the
origin, anyway,
of let me put it to you
perfectly straight)
1982 (1993)
All’s All
A construed entity too
lessened to syllabify;
a mite or mote
dimpling
5domy generalization;
a vague locus
(the flow of air
through prisons)
a puff of
10the whiff of
a snail falling asleep;
stringy recollections of
fruitflies cruising
rosy bowlsful of
15mangoes ripening mild:
ghostly leavings leaving
ghosts leave: retinal
worms empurpling
light scars
20behind today’s views:
bits of
_________
retrenched nothings:
so much so,
little and all
25alternately disappear:
the tiniest kiss
at the world’s end
ends the world.
1985 (1988)
Hard and Fast
A clarifying high
wind in October’s
shanky last days—
maples luminous
5mounds or
glacial hills dressed
down to shiny outline:
and thickets only
darkness traveled
10through, clearly having
kept nothing worth
looking for: October
winds redress summer
tendencies, from
15the litter of
freeze-scorched branches
to whistling gray
limb and clatter—
_________
plenty of
20clarification coming
ice can seal in tight.
1976 (1988)
So Long, Descartes
Once, trunks pitched into or
dragged down rivers, stones
cracked off or molded smooth
by exposure to edges, and living
5trees, too, and all things
were spiritual, they flowed
with us in and out of seasons,
dispositions, everything not
without motion, and nothing was,
10lived in our bones and went on
with our marrow at narrows’ ends:
but then the ruler, the calculator
found and added up numbers,
groceries came to so much a week,
15and sums and subtractions
slowed negotiations into form:
with access to little, we put
ourselves in charge of it: but, now,
our adding machines, as subtle
20almost as the world, take in
quantities unimaginably specific
_________
and broad, and now again we see
not established identities and
limits but the free flow returned,
25the spiritual comings and goings
so dense, interpenetrant, and
responsive that tone and feeling
are our guide, and rivers, tides,
fronts, highs flow as they flowed
30before, and we see with a trillion
events per second, hear and taste
in a flood, and live, if we live,
liveliest in this broad neighborliness.
1986
Marginals
Some of these old widow women around here are roving
loners: no matter how deep the snow or bitterly near
zero the air, they’re long-gaited out in their boots
of a morning and gone: one’s high hip spins outward
5every step, and one’s eyes set ahead just above the
trees, and one hangs over a slouchy net bag lumpy at
the bottom, suggesting she could pack up and off
in any direction without regret, unsurprised: one
leans into a leaning shoulder, sidelong, as if eyeing
10the ditch, as if listening with one ear (but
I’ve seen her on both sides of town in a morning): I
don’t know where they go, probably not out to eat,
_________
because they often don’t have their teeth in: I don’t
know what they do: mostly they just go, it’s the motion,
15going, I think, and, going, they rise through high
lattices till motion fills with song, their heads fill
with sky, and a wind rises in them like ecstasy or
death and, their minds made up, they let the earth go.
1979 (1985)
Day Ghosts
Spring thaw peels loose
the leaves snow caught
last fall before they
had really settled down:
5now, a windy Sunday, they
stir over dry lawn
and remnant windrows of
ice, as if looking
for the place they’d meant
10to go: but it’s not now
as it was then
settling-down time, and
everywhere the leaves go
greens are
15breaking out
amid the funeral arrangements
and the eyes of jonquils
hold on to their morning
tears and snowdrops, head down,
20try not to look so bright.
1982 (1985)
Next to Nothing
Surely, choice in life isn’t just a one-sided manufacture of mental boxes
to set out fluorescent along preferred directions nor mental blocks
to heighten retaining walls against rivers of self-insistence: surely,
there is interplay: just because a rein will sway the horse one way rather
5than another doesn’t mean you can get there without the horse, with just
a rein: surely, there is a shifting dynamics between artifice, as imposed
choice, and emergence, as that which finds its way: choice includes choosing
to be chosen by life, that is, choosing to be willing to be led out, like
a horse, into whatever options may perchance arise: but, naturally,
10you don’t want a horse just standing there steaming with incipience unable
to devote himself to rolling in the sand, say, or taking off at a gallop down
the freeway: you can’t let a horse get up every morning and decide to do
something different: choice does not predominantly mean multiple choice, it
tends to mean narrowing imposition, settling for one thing and sticking to
15it: adolescence is just a boiling off of puzzlings, polymorphous
possibilities, in order to cool down into a thing or two, mostly on top or
mostly on bottom with an occasional visit otherwise: let’s say that after
adolescence you start to have sense, you start to make sense, and you start
making right on the top of the brain where the day to day mishmash of
20decision-making chooses its ground, and then a kind of surface crystallization
forms, lattices drawing lines and leanings, that grown stable lets down
feelers underneath its structure searching for foundation or at least for
_________
sodden mesh: so much of the mulch of brain is assimilated to or subsumed
by or overmatched by penetrant definition, so that after some years
25 you as much as have a wharf of piers along your negotiations; you may even
have a many-decked sealiner capable of setting out and returning relatively
unshaken: in some, fortunate or unfortunate, even the seas freeze, all the
ships tie up wherever they happen to be, the waves hold their steely
corrugations, the person lets
life move around him, by him, an adequate
30illusion of motion, and he comes and goes through the world with boulder-like
steadiness: such a person! how enviable in some ways, ways that the frail
and fluttery, the terrified starters and blunderers long to try: well,
every sweet thing drags a dull cousin along: would you want to storm an ocean
free just so you could take a little cruise: be choosy: live for others.
1985
For My Beloved Son
The blackberries that ripened
soon after you left are
ripening again and thunderstorms
after the broken-down winter
5are rolling through here again:
I keep looking for the season
that will bring you home:
I don’t know how many times
_________
I’ve put in the seed, watered
10the plants, counted the blossoms.
(1993)
Outlines of Absence
Teeth are distressing only
if you try to save them:
say there’s a bit of rot
spotted under an old
5crown, no way to get to it,
so the dentist recommends
splitting the tooth in half,
drilling out the dark, putting
a gold cap over
10each root, then uniting the two
under a new crown: two little
shaved-thin roots sticking up
through the gum! the terror,
the dark journeys traced through
15the night of maybe something coming undone
or not getting something right, the
whole invention maybe finally not
holding up, the little gold rod
stabilizing that molar to the rest
20cracking or not quite
suiting its groove: the money!
whereas the poor and lost wait
unconcernedly, chewing away, till
the big tooth wobbles and they
_________
25yank it out: the relief! plenty
of bananas, whole wheat bread,
skim milk, the provender of paradise,
prove the bright flashes of
professionals mockeries and pinful wastes,
30while the unsaved loosen wide smiles.
Same Old Story
You turn to others
and leave
me standing there
with all the
5responsibilities and none
of the rights
(and you never
wrong) but one
of these days
10when you come
scratching back (backscratching)
looking for me, who
knows, I may be
dead and
15gone or gone,
baby, I may be
dead and
gone or gone
1978
Beautiful Woman
The spring
in
her step
has
5turned to
fall
Cognoscenti
A little
money, you
know what
money can
5buy; a
lot of
money, you
know what
money can’t
10buy.
Continuity
I’ve pressed so
far away from
my desire that
if you asked
5me what I
want I would,
_________
accepting the harmonious
completion of the
drift, say annihilation,
10probably.
Gung Ho
Arriving takes
destination
out
of destination:
5the grave’s
brink,
to late
years,
dismantles remnant
10forwardness.
Appendix
Houdini died
not
of what
he
5couldn’t get
out
of but
couldn’t
_________
get out
10of
him.
Stand-In
A young woman
on the bridge tosses
rocks of
old snow
5over the rail and leans to
watch them
streak
down into the gorge: all
the pleasures of
10flight with
none of the harmful side
effects.
(1994)
Magic
The wind across
the street blusters
a leaf over
snow till it
5scampers up a
tree, flips
head down, fluffy
tail
straight up.
Rarities
After thaws
and
showers, the
brook’s muddy
5(loud) but
as it
slows it
clears till in
summer
10drought the
ledges clink
crystalline plinks.
1977 (1994)
Old Geezer
The quickest
way
to change
the
5world is
to
like it
the
way it
10is.
1985
Financial Services
Such a
greedy
man if
you
5gave him
a
universe he’d
ask
for black
10holes.
1978
[“Grove’s Way,” first collected in The Really Short Poems, also appears here in Brink Road. The text of the poem is identical in every respect.]
Rolling Reality
I saw a headless mummy out walking at dusk:
he carried his skull in the crook of
his left arm and with his right hand
made signs having to do with the reality
5of consequence: sir, I said, you needn’t
trouble yourself with dumbspeak for your
mere presence here startles knowledge
of which saying’s the puny part:
but the mummy held the skull into
10my face, and it spoke perfect French,
_________
I think, a tongue I do not perfectly
understand: but I said to the skull
(and to the mummy) if the dead aren’t
dead (is that what you said?) then what
15reality can clear this haunted coming?
1974
Thresher
I was made for another world, this
one, though, in stock:
so here I am: I hope you feel if not
great okay to stick around:
5I talk, talk because like a mistake
on a grocery slip, if I’m not found
out, I lie unnoticed: what future dwells
in such a state: found out
causes a flurry, and passed over
10boils and freezes reticence unbearably:
not for this world,
I twist and say so only to say so.
1977
Putting on Airs
What oblivion is is total
reassimilation, not a
scrap of debris, stone-dust
blur, left behind, no
5flinders of recalcitrance
cluttering the cycles,
_________
&
nbsp; ruffling the symmetry of the
wide-sweep rounding coming
round: who can bear the
10hillside gully-washed to naked
flint, where so-and-so fell
down in prophecy’s seizure:
or who wants to recall
Halicarnassus someone way
15back came from: oblivion,
oblivion, residual of the
human common, how vacant and
bright, total and mutual
the gatherings there, the
20blameless transparency,
the clear flow of desireless
desire, finding its way back,
back, back here to these suns,
stone-gripping startlements.
1988
Superstars
When I find my new shape (hobbyhorse, roller
