The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  useless, probably: the marvelous useless, though, seems

  more marvelous than the useful marvelous: but I just

  drink the water: soothing occlusion: where can I find

  285any junk: every street or alley I look into bedazzles

  _________

  me with poetry, the call to naming, to saying forth,

  to being said forth: when I get the fences, lightpoles,

  ladders, plastic tricycles, cracked concrete slabs all

  together in a heap the heap will round up and bloom

  290into the shapeliest rose: today, I am filled with anger,

  the worst-looking thing in the house or on the street:

  it’s a fifth: last night they had a fourth, a boom-boom

  show, pow, pow, k-choom: everybody that could get

  there got there, wheelchairs, forearm walking braces,

  295canes, four-footed canes, tricycles, bicycles, motor

  bikes and cycles, skating boards, and jams and jams

  of cars: one ought to try to define what is so great

  about a fireworks (firewords) show and then design a theory

  of poetry around the definitions: I guess colorful

  300explosions are, by all odds, what we most adore:

  and then, even more, colorful explosions that assume

  sky-high figure, umbrellas of downspinning, metronomic

  regularity of hard staccato with the punctuating white

  terminal stab: dit, dit, dit, dit, WHAM: and the

  305transitoriness of it all, worse than day lilies, calls

  out the hunger of immediate appreciation or loss of

  life: everybody wants a community of shared perceptions

  and with fireworks you get the community: last year

  we had a well-publicized poetry show and attracted

  310fifteen people: half of them, approximately, were the

  performers, and the other half, scattered and roped

  wives, husbands, cousins, intimate friends: it was

  _________

  not a good show: if you want the community to turn out

  don’t build a church, ballet theatre, sound stage,

  315art museum or any of those expensive, cultural things:

  this is the difference in a democracy: the money is

  where the people is: in the old days, the money was

  where the people wasn’t: so, I guess we’ll have to

  adjust: 199 years independent, we may learn yet that

  320a servitude to numbers is still servitude: and worse,

  the few are run out of face into comedy at their

  gatherings, having no glitter of diamond, even, to sanction

  the glitter of mind: our artists to the trash pile!

  of course: well, let us make a mess of trash:

  325politically equal (in theory), let us begin to form an

  aristocracy of life (in fact): (let us make certain

  our group does not form out of public, governmental

  funds: wherever there are funds, mediocre managers

  gather to swivel and sway: they create objectives and

  330the objectives are wrong: they create evaluations and

  don’t know what they’re talking about: they seize the

  power stick and they know they have the right instrument

  and they “help” you right out of your mind: ta ta:)

  this is Feeding the Fucking Sparrows Day: why not:

  335they make a round table out of a slice of bread:

  an occasional fluttering, peckery disagreement, but

  then right back to it: funny, though, they eat the

  table which, nonArthurian, goes from square to round, then

  tears away in chunks till it’s flown away as all-day

  _________

  340providers: over nothing there is no disagreement: but

  it’s hard to keep Feeding the Fucking Sparrows Day from

  becoming also Feeding the Fucking Starlings Day and

  Feeding the Fucking Grackles Day: purity needs a

  mixture to know itself by: a lively play of the mind

  345over the particulars like wind over the inlet tide:

  tomorrow we will have another Day called Listening

  for the Sparrows to Cut the Fucking Cheese Day: yesterday

  was Independence Day: someday we will have to call a

  Day Interdependence Day: neither sincere nor serious,

  350I hesitate to engage anything above the level of a

  broken bottle for fear of being, in a free state,

  misunderstood or investigated: questioned closely, I

  would have to admit that the America I love is hardly

  in prevalent view so it must be somewhere hiding around

  355weeds, fencerows, windowboxes, railsidings, and abandoned

  roads: hiding around abandoned roads is a good one:

  what would you say differentiates the highminded from

  the lowdown good-for-nothings: clearly, it’s a matter

  of altitude: but altitude in terms of what:

  360perhaps, it is representativeness, including the

  principles of synopsis, assimilation, concept: then

  there’s high society as over and against the low, common,

  and vulgar: then there are high places (where the rich

  live): everything high appears to be desirable except

  365high meat prices: why is that: I’m just sure that our

  fundamental image is hierarchical, disposed like a

  _________

  mountain with the wide and numerous low shrinking to the

  narrow and lofty few: thank goodness, I’m the very

  peakstone of something, a mt, though I don’t know how high

  370it is: it is not as high as General Motors or even

  Anaconda Copper or Kennecott: it’s about as high as

  up to here: anyhow, I’m sitting on it: it feels good:

  bowling champions make twelve times as much as poetry

  champions: pool sharks about ten: tennis, fifty, etc.:

  375poetry is a range of ridges which, however, rises:

  since (life is a terminal disorder) to choose to gogo

  forward into life, or a makeshift thereof, is also

  to choose death, it’s hard to get everybody up and out in

  the morning bushy with appetite: but nature to

  380prevent bitching makes it bindingly easy on us by

  providing only one way to go(go), choose it or not, a

  half-reassuring nudge or fate-motif that relieves us

  of the responsibility for any ultimate disposition

  to things: the sparrow lights in the steel fence mesh

  385and cheeps: (note the two orders of statement: one

  is endlessly expandable and conditional and the other

  firm and complete): we had the fifth last night: I

  mean that last of the fifth: today is the sixth: last

  night was the drum and bugle corps competition: every

  390corps should have won, although some should have won

  more than others: I liked St. Ignatius from Hicksville

  best though, although the leader was great, I liked the

  leader of the first corps better—the Black Watch, I

  _________

  think: she was heartbreakingly beautiful: I loved her

  395instantly as I must love her forever: though she was

  in perfect command, she was not commanding: that is,

  command was not so much in question as to be required:

  her high-stepping stills were all the same,

  rigorous and to the exact height: when she walked,

  400when she walked her right fist came to her chin, her

  left hand flicked out behind her, completely feminine

  in a total dignity: she never once seemed self-conscious

  o
r out of role: even in her salute to the audience

  her participation was altogether with the corps: at

  405the end, when the corps paraded by the stands, she did

  not yield a flicker of acknowledgment but held her part

  strict and clear: the other leaders, grand as they

  were, introduced some spoiling bit of sentimentality or

  grossness: ah, when the thing is flawlessly done! and

  410done pleasingly, not to please: it is an unbearably, I say,

  noble and generous use of the self, a beauty beyond

  every demand or contingency, a beauty in itself: this

  is not a matter of content or invention: the creator

  of the routine has his own place: this is performance

  415when performance itself creates clutches of value: I’ve

  heard performers, musicians, dancers knocked because

  they were the puppets of original genius but performance

  exceeds creativity into its own genius: this is the beauty

  of “Do the villanelle and shut up”: here I’m

  420working the antipode, the exact opposite: the slouch,

  _________

  the shambles, the crying out, the sore toe, bum knee

  after the show is over: but this is the sixth: it

  is Feeding the Fucking Sparrows Again Day: it’s the

  same if you look for junky language: in a way one hunk

  425of idiom floats swirls of energy as well as another:

  get your afflatus flattened, it just takes on prevalence:

  masturbation is handy, cheap, and clean: it engorges

  itself on phantasy, the line between the imagination

  and the seminal vesicle direct: hit the right image

  430and you come immediately: the scrotum is the conjurer’s

  bag of stones, bones, trinkets that are spilled out

  and sorted through till the sought image turns up,

  inflaming in its finding, desire seized and placed

  in context and given course: these little trinkets

  435touch off the deepest reservoirs of the self, unlock

  releases, the truest version: deepest are images of

  the other, or the same, or some detail or part of the

  other or the same, or even an image of the whole

  spiritual self of the other, or an image of the other’s

  440response, as seen in eyes or felt as through the central

  line of the imagination: any way to get there is the

  necessary way: any way that leads away ranges farthest

  and most accurately when it keeps its holding there:

  so we are in ourselves men and women, some of us with

  445phantasies that derive from and play into reality, some

  of us with phantasies reality cannot support or fulfill:

  nevertheless, crippled or distraught, we are members one

  _________

  of another, truly, and must appeal outwardly to rights

  and responsibilities: it is hard to be whole, unless it

  450is quite easy: anyway, we know, as when we hug a son,

  the spirit flows, it moves from the full self into the

  need: the transportation feels actual and

  physical: similar transmissions occur when one’s arms

  are around the beloved or when one thinks of a friend

  455away: these are the knowledges that lie lowest and rise

  highest in us: the bailiwick of love that best allows

  and describes us: still, it is so hard to write

  significantly of insignificant nothingnesses: until

  the poet comes, Wilbur or Wakoski, we must wait to see:

  460yesterday was 7-5-75: today next year will be 7-6-76:

  then there will be the once-in-a-decade 7-7-77, century:

  boy, innertube, and creek: get away with this: you can’t

  go by me: cutting figures gets a big hohum: why’s a man

  like you a man like you: rock has gutlevel appeal,

  465simplicity, and story line: plowed fields patched here

  and there with brilliant standing water: Yeats would

  have been okay if he hadn’t named his wife George:

  careful that the truth that sets you free doesn’t kill

  somebody else: the poet of nature or of civilization

  470reports a human seeing: the longest thing in North

  Carolina is Sunday morning: sex is at the bottom of

  things: circle around the truth without telling

  it and you tell it: clearing, thicket: a poem

  is a thicket whose clearing is disposition: you find

  _________

  475as much interest in the world as you have in it: you’re

  practically rotten before you’re ripe: day makes light

  of night: (realism, mimetic representation: copying,

  in different dimensions and modes the apparently real

  world the way it, to all appearances, really is): there

  480are two heavens, one is this world’s pleasure: the other

  is release from this world’s pain: well, the juice has

  expired and the therapy has run out of this: it is the

  next day, no apparent improvement over the preceding:

  it is Monday, July 7, 1975: the big weekend is over,

  485including, I hope, the all-night bouts and brawls in

  the house next door where a bunch of young fellows are

  doing a little renting: the music loud and bumpy from

  midnight on, the girls in gales of hightalk and humor,

  the men resorting to blows: the motorcycles at 3 a.m.

  490tearing up the backyard and getting stuck in the beach

  sand of the tearing: a kind of middle class, vacationing

  howl: I should call this Get the Fuck Out Day: but to

  where: this is my last resort: the dog across the street

  that for two summers hung over the fence yelping to

  495whistling hysteria at every passerby till two in the

  morning has been stationed back a ways behind the filling

  station: he still yaps but not with such proximal

  intensity: to make up for it, the lady next door has

  acquired a youngling which barks with youthful expectation

  500whenever possible: the noise level here is the sound

  equivalent of the trash level, including trashtruck noise:

  _________

  poets have no intention of saying what they mean: so

  they say something else that means what they mean:

  this reeling looking-around connects disparate areas

  505and through gravity compels them to form a globe;

  similitude and metaphor having arisen: in swerving

  away from the direct telling, the poet incorporates

  related areas of the world within his swerves, the

  bindings of avoidance: I spend a good deal of the

  510day rocking on the front porch girl watching: or

  boy watching: what with the long hair and slender

  shapely backs you can get pretty far into admiration

  before you realize it’s a boy: that’s a puzzling,

  stalling, acrid feeling, going in under the concept

  515girl and backing out under the concept boy: well,

  we’re told to love everybody and such confusion makes

  it a lot easier: I wish everybody would go to his

  library or neighbor and find out what ragweed is: then

  if everybody would just see to his own place, we could,

  520I’ll bet, get all or most of the ragweed pulled up today:

  it’s not that hard to pull it up, specially the month

  before it blooms when it stands about a foot or less:

  I just pulled up two plants growing at the foot of the

&nb
sp; telephone pole next to the gas station: then I pulled

  525up in five minutes a sight of small plants behind

  the gas station where there’s a discontinuity of soil between

  the street and the elevated pouring for the station:

  if everybody on his lot would get together and pull

  _________

  together, we could plink every plant out in an hour:

  530of course, ragweed pollen is so fine it will float in

  from anywhere: but local effects can have some effect:

  let’s try it, everybody: pitch in and pull up: some

  kid or assless old man or watery-thighed old woman might

  get a little relief: relief is what we’re after: I’ve

  535been so overstimulated lately it’s been frantic: I’ve

  screwed and otherwise engineered myself down to blanks

  but the continual flow of barefooted, half-naked nymphs

  by the door, and firm, phallic-bodied youths, has

  kept me in a constant, surprised knowledge of the reality:

  540I really don’t know what else to try, to get relief from

  relief: I’m afraid I’m going to wear myself out: back,

  as far as I’m concerned, to Feeding the Fucking Superego:

  or Counting the Cottonpicking Cracks in the Sidewalk:

  this one gal last night at the gala said, “That’s not what