by A. R. Ammons
finger, a cigar: how does surface
tension enter the picture, say, to
965insist on a bead: is there a constant
one could employ mathematically: it
is as hard to be precise as certain:
make room for some big swings in
language: the precious substance is
970slipperier than a transgressor in a
mud wrestle: it smears, slurs,
tends, splits: but define a drop
strictly, a standard, reality sloshed
around it in every disintegrating
975grade: so that multiplicity and
_________
mixture dissolve categories or else
with really tight, hard categories
the category slips out of material
existence and becomes an abstract
980constant, there where it can be
uneroded by change and difference:
a fantasy I was entertaining this
morning—and it is a fantasy—was
of a naked street, say one deserted
985at night or plunged into the early
heat of a new August day (or even the
emptiness one can sense of a filled
street, the commotion continuous,
evened out into a blur): a young
990man comes out into the empty street
but nothing is there to engage him:
the sabertooth is missing, there is
no mud-stuck elephant slashing his
trunk about at the verminlike little
995humans casting their stings and stones
at the tough hide for a kill: there
is no startling sight of a leopard
overhead waking to the movement below:
is the young man endowed with skills
1000and violences to find no focus all
day except that of idling around the
_________
steps of his apartment house: joking,
smoking, waiting to see if another
day can end: won’t he have to find
1005substitutes for the life he was made
for: won’t violence inside have to
find or make some outside: or must
drugs smooth unexpressed energies
down: well, there are no sabertooths
1010anymore but what is a man to do when
there are none
20
it’s so cold this morning: there’s
a downy clicking bark: there’s
starfrost on the windshield: let me
1015see, now: I’ve read that one should
never apologize: I wonder if I
should apologize: or should I just
let the evident be evident, since I
probably can’t condition that by
1020begging for mercy: who cares about
the excuses of a beggar—well, I
don’t know, maybe I would care: you
know, I take all these pills, every
morning: it’s because I’ve been
1025sick some: well, I think I lost a few
_________
brain cells in one or two of those
episodes, and one of the drugs makes
me wonder if I’m doing medical
emotions or synergetic emotions: I
1030think my vocabulary doesn’t access
the way it used to, and I don’t have
always ready ways to the heights: the
summit of my aspiration has worn
down into a talus of incidentals:
1035okay? I mean please excuse me: will you
permit me to go on, however I can,
nevertheless: will you add to and
not take away from: I’ve believed
in you, though I’ve lied, too, at
1040times: I’ve never lied essentially
because it is after all the song that
tells the truth: and it sometimes
lies but its lies are the truth:
the one side of a date seed looks like
1045an elongated you-know, the rumpled
closure, lips half-met, sooooooooo
inviting: and how sweet the surrounding
meat is! bananas for brains (and a
couple in a papersack) we took off
1050early for Syracuse: it was 13 and
the trees in the valley where waters
_________
and fogs run were entirely white,
fogs having clustered ice around
every twig: so brilliant in the
1055southeastern sun: whereas soon
after, as we were returning, all was
gone into a welcome darkness: you
know all: all is extremely poetic
and perfectly suited to such an
1060occasion: my vocabulary may be
chary but my diction is still sheer
poetry: I mean, my diction is
poetic: don’t you think?
21
I tell myself to think happy thoughts
1065but can’t think of any: still,
thinking of thinking happy thoughts
helps, sort of putting me on the side
of possibility: not that there aren’t
happy thoughts to think if you think
1070of all the blessings here patent and
available to thinking: misery comes
up with an image or two that blots
out frail peripheries of joy: wait,
wait: give it a little time, stuff
1075eases by: wait and see: think
_________
happy thoughts: sharply conceive:
engaged as we are with sex these
sexless days—everybody afraid of
everybody else—I have engaged the
1080pronunciation of harassment as my
special interest, and I prefer
HAIR-is-mint to
her-Ass-ment
the latter too precise, it almost
1085advertises what it condemns: I’ll
tell you, language, like nature, will
sometimes just undo itself: what a
narrow strip this walled road is:
shave a micron or two and you’re
1090off-roading: try to get a whole
stretch out, and you get cut back:
see what it will do and before you
can your speed is broken: I declare
I don’t know what to do with this
1095thing, these cramps, this breaking
back: oh, yes, typing is not easy
these days, especially for those
already accustomed to computers:
they can’t go back—what? and erase
1100things or do whole pages over or
type the whole poem over to station
_________
it differently on the page: they
won’t do: their backs are sped: of
course, sometimes they push the wrong
1105button and the hard stuff dissolves
or vandals tear off with a
computer in a hard drive to fly: I
have nothing to say I can’t take all
day at, because fifty years of yapping,
1110what have I finalized, not that one
can’t be diffident about finalization:
computers cannot give me back what
I want, which is what neither I nor
the computer ever heard of before:
1115the happening of something that never
happened, laying it out not so much
that nature can be abrogated as that
its becoming is unencompassed: I’m
sorry, I don’t care about information:
1120I can make up all I need:
22
if you miss life and get old, there’s
no way to unmiss it: you can’t,
you can’t: pull a switcheroo and
you’re an innocent out on a new
_________
1125stretch: your feelers are as limp
as roothairs, unattached as boughs:
stick with the old sticks—sapless:
play out the rag ends and trifles—
spend the squeezings of the spent:
1130my wife and I are not mall rats: we
are mall giraffes: we are way above
having any fun, throwing any money
away on junk: we think the people
are basically impossible with long
1135credit card balances: my wife doesn’t
want anything because she already
has everything: however well-off,
she is impoverished of desire: the
other people are, frankly, flappy
1140with eagernesses: I say, “want not,
want not”: my wife agrees: we
passed a Santa whose ho-ho-ho was so
insincere we considered the power of
artificiality—the deliberately
1145and emotionally conserving stylized:
so many kids to do a warm globe
around: I’m surprised some of these
men know what they’re doing: our
Anniversary (46th) imminent, we went
1150over to the counter, and I read my
_________
wife several gushy cards, and she
read me some and, aglow with sappiness,
we drifted out, all tucked in in a
bubble: our cheapest Anniversary:
1155well, we have realized that the
treasures are deep-lying spirituals:
they lie so deep we rarely touch
them but, boy, are they sumptuous!
Janowitz had muffins with us at the
1160Collegetown Bagelry: she said she
wished those Balkaners would
take a stab at peace!
23
lawsey-dawsey, it’s the sixth
anniversary of my first death, and
1165I still identify the sweet with
reality, though oft haunted off to
the bulbous rounds and resonances of
the inner world cast out: but no,
really, I’m too scientific to think
1170“what is there” is really there:
really: I mean, I really hope I am:
I went down the road for a walk
already and found, as usual, some of
the reality not too sweet: a halo
_________
1175of blueflies over the recent kill,
crows standing about like pallbearers
too stuffed with lunch to
pay attention: and the brook, the
wide brook, chipped by so many pools
1180and increments, was gone: no water:
not a trickle, just some lessened
holdings, and those holdings
silent: a sparrow
dipped his bill in one cup and
1185disturbed the whole sky: well, but
you know if one gets down into the
fine, there’s too damn much of everything:
but that’s how dry it is: how dry
is it, you say: well, it’s so dry
1190that whole trees are dying on the
campus, just dropping brown
leaves and browning out the rest:
but, oh, how sweet to think of
my students: they are young and
1195trying (and trying) and they are
nervous and not certain, but they
are doing PRETTY WELL: they may be
gone before I am gone, but I will
dream about them out among the walk-
1200ways, seeking shade or giving up all
_________
the snow: they will flutter about
almost real like scarves
the wind’s wearing or like birds
pitching together for migration:
1205actually, the spirit which was never
anything goes: the rest stays here
24
I am so ill-stanchioned myself, you
know, just me, that I can’t get on
without, like, going to work, getting
1210away from myself into the affairs
of others, the elevator slowing and
catching still on the remnants of
old floors, plunging easing up: I’m
always hungry for compliments, anything
1215to bolster me lofty: I consume compliments
like bricks tossed into a black hole
for bottom, a solid floor,
but it all oozes away, undermined
by an oily, massive slip: I
1220should go in the brick business: I
might help myself out a little: I
should throw chunks of old foundation
in there, the steel rods ciliating
concrete: a few bales of ginned
_________
1225cotton, absorbencies: a couple of
barrels of sticky-wicky: some jungle
temples: a ridge off the top of the
Rockies: that little peninsula that
reaches out from—oh, well: sub-
1230continent? where there is no love
nothing will take root: the hollow
will not fill: earth’s walkabout
will not arise: steps leading up
will not surprise: dreams will
1235not fog off the higher elevations of
ascension: what is left, after love,
to live with? anger, guilt, anxiety:
I speak not just of the loves of
thighs but of the love of another
1240more, say, than of oneself: there
are those whom to lose soaks direction
out of the tree boughs, prevents
snow from settling in the granite
crevices, makes daylight an odd
1245visitor: the stanchions give in,
wither like sea oats in a hurricane:
and then all the world cannot fill
the hole which becomes a trillion
miles of nothing
25
1250it scares me to think that being
just me won’t be enough to do it:
(I’ve had a problem feeling like it
up to now) but it scares me
more to think I have to be more than
1255I am because like I said I’m already
running a deficit: and it scares me
even more to think I could get by
with less than just me: because if
I’ve amounted to nothing up to now
1260wouldn’t I amount to less being
less: well, but then you have to
think, how well does this thing that
has to be done have to be done:
maybe nobody can do it as well as I
1265think it should be done: if it’s
okay to do it well enough to get
by, why then maybe I’m your man after
all because I’m OVERSIZE Average,
and even the low range of my average
1270should do to do it: there you are:
the thing is to do it, go ahead and
do it: and see what happens: people
may appreciate it more than you
_________
think: often people expect so little:
1275there are so many things they’re
used to finding they can’t do any
better than anyone else: and if
you’re really good, they can be
resentful and jealous (and you, by
1280the way, can be removed from regular
average into an object of some awe
and fear, and people will fear you
then but they won’t like you): if
you do poorly but show
1285resolve and courage, you may attract
a lot of mutual understanding and
sympathy and from a few possibly a
few offers of help: what we have
here, in other words, is some pretty
1290down to earth stuff in which a lot
of shining on your part may not be
all that appropriate: when #1 looks
up, there is no one to look up to, and
