The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

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