by A. R. Ammons
way, 7-21) that said I fall far short of Stevens: I
1075guess that means you couldn’t hang your hat on mine: I
never tried to fall far long of him: I have great
respect for Mr. Stevens, but he is not as sobering as
the ocean: after watching two hours of Flintstones, it’s
unwackying to get right down to the surf and see it
1080rolling and busting in: there are so many actions and
yet they are so simple and similar: the actions do not
resist the intelligence (poems do), in fact, declare
themselves openly in big summary waves: it’s not hard
to tell what is happening, though it is of course quite
1085past calculation: other men are my man: I don’t like
fancy colors or big cigars: I like loudmouths that
pretend to care for the people: I don’t care for the
people much: I don’t know many of them: but I mean to
care for the people: I really am fond of all the
1090minorities, except the rich: I have sympathy even for
them: they are deprived of the right to earn a living:
they know people see them as rich, not as people proper.
1975 (1977)
GLARE (1997)
With love to my grandson Matthew Irving Ammons
Part One: Strip
1
wdn’t it be silly to be serious, now:
I mean, the hardheads and the eggheads
are agreed that we are an absurd
irrelevance on this slice of curvature
5and that a boulder from the blue
could confirm it: imagine, mathematics
wiped out by a wandering stone, or
grecian urns not forever fair when
the sun expands: can you imagine
10cracking the story off we’ve built
up so long—the simian ancestries,
the lapses and leaps, the discovery
of life in the burial of grains:
the scratch of pictorial and syllabic
15script, millennia of evenings around
the fires: nothing: meaninglessness
our only meaning: our deepest concerns
such as death or love or child-pain
arousing a belly laugh or a witty
20dismissal: a bunch of baloney: it’s
_________
already starting to feel funny: I
think I may laugh: few of the dead
lie recalled, and they have not
cautioned us: we are rippers and
25tearers and proceeders: restraint
stalls us still—we stand hands
empty, lip hung, dumb eyes struck
open: if we can’t shove at the
trough, we don’t understand: but is
30it not careless to become too local
when there are four hundred billion
stars in our galaxy alone: at
least, that’s what I heard: also,
that there are billions of such
35systems spread about, some older,
some younger than ours: if the
elements are the elements thruout,
I daresay much remains to be learned:
however much we learn, tho, we may
40grow daunted by our dismissibility
in so sizable a place: do our gods
penetrate those reaches, or do all
those other places have their godly
nativities: or if the greatest god
45is the stillness all the motions add
up to, then we must ineluctably be
_________
included: perhaps a dribble of
what-is is what what-is is: it is
nice to be included, especially from
50so minor a pew: please turn, in yr
hymnals, to page “Archie carrying on
again”: he will have it his way
though he has no clue what his way
is: after such participations as
55that with the shrill owl in the
spruce at four in the morning with
the snow ended and the moon come
out, how am I sagely to depart from
all being (universe and all—by
60that I mean material and immaterial
stuff) without calling out—just a
minute, am I not to know at last
what lies over the hill: over the
ridge there, over the laps of the
65ocean, and out beyond the plasmas
of the sun’s winds, and way out
where the bang still bubbles in the
longest risings: no, no: I must
get peanut butter and soda crackers
70and the right shoe soles (for ice)
and leave something for my son and
leave these lines, poor things, to
_________
you, if you will have them, can they
do you any good, my trade for my
75harm in the world: come, let’s
celebrate: it will all be over
2
where is one to find room enough to
write in: is the planet too small
now—for words: and having seen
80into the instants of universal
beginning and knowing as we now know
the last seconds of the universal close
—are words drowned or drowned out or
still floating buoyantly tagging
85this and that, splintering clogs,
warping bends into screw-you mood
stances: what are words to do, turn
to pictures, leave it to visuals,
oh, the spirit dies, but the body
90lives forever, run out of its limits
though and caught up into others,
the housing spirits of others,
mold feed, ant freight, the mouth
parts and anuses of riddling larvae:
95alas, not as ourselves do we come
again or go anywhere else, after we
_________
go: oh, we go, we go, we go, so
long—forever: though, when we go,
it is only for an instant and then
100we are gone, and staying gone, we
are gone timelessly and once and for
all: a quick trip covering eternity
so what is it to be while we are here
in this splendid (America) place:
105must we be only splendid and, if not,
trash: can’t we be young if not
eternally young, our muscles at the
peak, our body weight in grams, our
teeth even, bright, eternally brushed:
110generations of bacteria arise in the
mouth that the next drink washes
away: and ages of fauna ride
out with the feces: microscopic mites
territorialize our faces, a species
115for the eyelids, one for the cheek
bones, the nose, etc: I may be
making this up: am I someone who
just says things: would I say
anything to get it into play: do I
120move the troops out onto opposite
blazes of the plain to know the
“field” of how they meet: will I give
_________
my life to one side against the other
or will I side with neither but
125stick around to praise the winner,
perhaps partake of the bubbly of
victory—not the loser’s damp
ground and groans: or feel for
both, pain and joy that mean nothing,
130my spirit unworthy of the sufferers
and the victors: is there no side
but one side or the other: can’t
one observe and meditate: sometimes
&
nbsp; in the last weeks of cancer when all
135has been tried (and some of it close
to killing) and when life is seen
complete, nothing to be expected
and nothing expected of anyone, the
sick one’s spirit shines and we
140who don’t yet know how sweet an hr
can be or how long another minute,
we don’t know why: in extremis, is
love the main thing and the memory
of some other person diamonds,
145rubies, sapphires, and emeralds
3
I keep proving I’m not god’s gift to
the world by trying to prove I am:
is a big ego the shell of a rotten
egg: well, I think not: is a big
150ego the size of the emptiness: not
what is full but what wants to fill:
whereas, doesn’t the worthy person
excuse himself over and over, saying
until it makes your blood boil, I am
155unworthy, anyone can do it: the web
we weave when we practice not to
deceive requires more training: with
a straight move, you can lie and
deceive: but to be honest you must
160work off all the impurities, skim
the scum, strain out the niblets,
fine-tune the flame, before the simple
truth is simply said: it’s so easy
to be crooked, no wonder so many
165people head straight for it: I, trying (and
failing) to be honest, shrink from
easy identifications, such as being
a member of a movement or school or
kind of behavior: it seems it would
_________
170be so easy to be outrageous, yet it
must not be because so many look
worshipfully to that: no, no, no,
I say, and back off: no, no, I don’t
want any of that: trying to be
175honest, tho, is so colorless: it
has no flash or gimmick, no clear
category: it will get you million
and book contract nil: I haven’t
even been called an environmentalist
180yet: I’ve been called a nature poet
but that meant human nature, whatever
that is: ha, ha: wit from pain,
tears from joy, love from violence,
a cattybiarsoned world, oh, yeah:
185oh, yeah
4
hear me, O Lord, from the height of
the high place, where speaking is not
necessary to hearing and hearing is
in all languages: hear me, please,
190have mercy, for I have hurt people,
though I think not much and where
much never intentionally and I have
accumulated a memory (and some heavy
_________
fantasy) guilt-ridden and as a
195nonreligious person, I have no way
to assuage, relieve, or forgive
myself: I work and work to try to
redeem old wrong with present good:
but I’m not even sure my good is good
200or who it’s really for: I figure I
can be forgiven, nearly, at least,
by forgiving; that is, by understanding
that others, too, are caught up in
flurries of passion, of anger and
205resentment and, my, my, jealousy and
that coincidences and unintentional
accidents of unwinding ways can’t
be foreknown: what is started here,
say, cannot be told just where to
210go and can’t be halted midway and
can’t, worst, be brought
back and started over: we are not,
O You, at the great height, whoever
you are or whatever, if anything, we
215are not in charge, even though we
riddle localities with plans,
schemes, too, and devices, some of
them shameful or shameless: half-guilty
in most cases, sometimes in all, we
_________
220are half-guilty, and we live in
pain but may we suffer in your cool
presence, may we weep in your surrounding
that already has understood:
we could not walk here without our
225legs, and our feet kill, our
steps however careful: if you can
send no word silently healing, I
mean if it is not proper or realistic
to send word, actual lips saying
230these broken sounds, why, may we be
allowed to suppose that we can work
this stuff out the best we can and
having felt out our sins to their
deepest definitions, may we walk with
235you as along a line of trees, every
now and then your clarity and warmth
shattering across our shadowed way
5
seems like every winter the outside
chills a mouse inside and then there
240you are: historical diseases and
funny viruses from Arizona: last
winter we thought we’d missed a
visitor, when my wife pulled up a
_________
couch cushion, and there was a clutch
245of nuts—walnuts (how his mouth
got around those who knows), pecans
and stuff off the breakfast table:
got him: last night as I relished
sitcoms, I noticed a flashback, a
250mouse had appeared at a corner and
flashed away: so I searched up the
traps and cheese, and this morning
there he lay belly up with the trap
on top: he had got the wire not
255across the head or neck but across
the middle and had probably leaped
and tossed some, clacking the trap
a foot or two away from center before
he lost the case: just when he
260thought he had it made: when is
it ever more than a passing thought
in this life: I affirm nothing except
that I affirm nothing: just give me
breezes in the treezes and let wisdom
265out the door: where I came from it
wouldn’t be smart to talk about art:
talk about sawing logs or getting
the swamp hogs up or worming tobacco
or gutting ditches would be a lot
_________
270safer: when in Rome: don’t try to
get the Romans to do what you do:
6
the highest place, though, is my idea
of the highest place and whose seat
it is (along with the seat) is my
275projection, nothing more: and the
occupant, for all I know, may value
the lowest place more or assuming
an equatorial rondure may like one
pole as much as another; or, of
280course, may not go in for valuation
of any kind: the lowest may be where
our Energy comes from, and the highest
may be a wilting out into pellucid
directionlessness: in other words,
285I don’t know what I’m talking about:
but if I understood my source as
from the depths (wherever) I might
think it silly to plead mercy (for
what) in all those fadings-away of
290lofty subtleties: to have felt the
onset of a deep-energy source, to
cry out for one’s own, to piss up
the landmarks of one’s own place,
_________
to fill women with food and seed,
295to climb up any high place one can
find and sing (like a bird) I, I:
isn’t this as good as withering away
on the upmost fringes of vanishing
self-excuse: there really is a
300pecking order of peckers: measly
peckered guys feel like covering up
in showers, and swingers clunk about
like metronomes, a rhythm noted and
