The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

by A. R. Ammons

  do you suppose there is Noone in the

  sky: has Hubble spotted nothing:

  is it really true that a dust cloud

  is collapsing somewhere (so slowly)

  2935that will center out a sun, perhaps

  with remnant planets, and everything

  will start out all over again

  somewhere else: and is there nothing

  left in the whirling dark star but

  2940whirling, that hard dark body whirling:

  my goodness: are we merely here:

  are we only a mockery the light will

  never miss: I saw dogs catch a

  squirrel on campus today: well fed

  2945they just mauled it and didn’t eat

  it: later, I passed close to look

  upon it and a blowfly, bright metallic,

  was pitching about on it: I think

  that whatever cares for the squirrel

  2950was in the squirrel and somehow

  failed: the fly “cares” but the

  dogs are gone, doggone dogs: other

  squirrels were not in attendance:

  when something dies you might as well

  _________

  2955forget about it

  61

  see a penny, pick it up, it’s 2¢ (and

  the IRS spurned), considering taxes,

  village, city, county, state, federal,

  school, and sales: I cried out to

  2960the heights in my misery, and the

  heights said, cool it, and said,

  can’t you see I’m making and colliding

  galaxies and stuff and watching the

  watches (I mean, clocks) and over

  2965there a 150,000,000-stretch of

  light years is turning to plasma and

  something is always going off like

  popcorn, a peppery popping of suns,

  or a smacking of wobbly stones

  2970long-dwelt in speed: so I said,

  listen, okay, I get it, cool it: &

  just there in that wrung moment I

  understood the guiding principle and

  started scaring up a little supper:

  2975hey, you never know: you could win

  the lottery or your poems could come

  in for something, your bone could

  _________

  _________

  harden, or the sun could do itself

  in, a quick quieting: I would say,

  2980go ahead, call out to the heights:

  it couldn’t hurt: the heights,

  unmollifiable, continued, listen,

  this cut-up method will not work,

  I can’t be spoken to this way and

  2985what was it you said anyway: one

  could go on with this: in the

  beginning, it was easier, I think,

  to begin than it is now: there was

  some say one big pop, after which

  2990complexity quickly ensued: whereas

  if you began today, you would be

  faced (figuratively) with an estimated

  unenumerated 100 million species:

  whereas there were no species at all

  2995at first: when mud separated into

  water and rock, then there were three

  things: and light: I just feel so

  broken down: there isn’t a bit of

  room on this tape for a little

  3000expansion or elaboration: sculpture

  becomes grit: kidneys, tubules: a

  blinding lack of scope and sense’s

  fracturing frit: but, of course,

  _________

  when everything runs, nothing runs

  3005through your mind: the total

  answering makes no world where you

  can see the carriage rounding the

  bend: streams need to break in on

  themselves into banks and tend, this

  3010way or that, noticeably apart:

  everybody knows that’s what holds us

  here forever limited, forever fragile

  and not forever: there’s a bump on

  my rump, right in the abyss of my

  3015yss

  62

  have I put my input in: if not, where

  have I put it: I’ve written so much

  I think I must have put in my input:

  but every morning afresh, I feel

  3020unexpressed: rain in the luminous

  woods, yellow with unfallen fall,

  feels like creation beginning: and

  gulls foraging on the lawn by the waste

  treatment plant blur in and out of

  3025form through windshield

  rain: I always supposed the better

  place we go to was better because it

  _________

  was better: but, of course, it’s

  better because it’s no place, nothing

  3030at all, an end to this place:

  that’s better: now, the furniture

  of forever, the terra celestial, the

  gold streets lining puffy clouds,

  the throne, the streams that flow by

  3035(benches, hammocks, somewhere to lie

  or sit down)—oh, well, I don’t have

  to do away with kitchen materials

  because I never think, and never

  thought, of kitchens: a clear

  3040place—O Blivion: I still like it

  here: learn to love misery, confusion

  and you better here considerably

  63

  sixty years ago, I used to hear every

  Sunday that Jesus was coming: the

  3045preacher wasn’t specific but said it

  could be any hour or minute but

  certainly before next Sunday: next

  Sunday would come but no Jesus, and

  the preacher never seemed embarrassed

  3050for his disaster quotient was as high

  as ever, and certainly something had

  to happen before next Sunday: Jesus

  _________

  was coming, the good people would be

  caught right up where they were,

  3055fishing or frigging, and the graves

  were to fly open, the nice people

  winging away, and the bad folks about

  to get it: well, all this will do

  well as a statement of the provisionality

  3060of things, a warning not to rely on

  any morrow but to check out today:

  I guess that’s why the congregation

  never seemed alarmed to be there but

  skittish about ever being there

  3065again: after all, it’s what the Bible

  said: and most of all it sounded

  right: a sky rock the size of Rhode

  Island, already on course if a million

  years off, is probably what they,

  3070I mean the preacher, was/were really

  worried about because it might hit

  any minute: but the boats this morning

  down by the steamboat landing, now

  the Farmers’ Market, bobbed barely

  3075in the boat shed, each boat in its

  stall standing in water quiescent as

  the giant bulls in the bull barn after

  a draining emotional experience: (you

  _________

  know how they run out the artificial

  3080cow, mounted on something like a

  slender wheelbarrow, all of which the

  bull mounts, willing, no doubt, to

  be fooled but worried something’s not

  completely right: what, tho, won’t

  3085a creature do for a little relief:

  no telling how many times the bull

  has to come every year: but that is

  an unworthy verbal effect: the bulls

  are royalty, prizewinning ribb
ons

  3090cascading down their stall doors:)

  but it was pouring rain this morning

  after months of dry weather, and the

  boats appeared sulled in their booths,

  adoze like the nearly satisfied

  3095bulls, but the people at the market

  were mostly missing, a cold rain,

  an anxious rattle of rain on the tin

  roof, the greens still not hit by

  frost: a sense of an imminence, a

  3100change, snow pellets in the higher

  elevations: we need to think of the

  power of prevention and the prevention

  of power

  64

  well, it’s true, I’m from North

  3105Carolina where there’s precious little

  ice skating, but we do get brittle

  little crusts of ice on puddles and

  stuff, you can crack it, pane thin,

  and eat it like a wafer: slips in

  3110your hands and freezes your fingertips

  but so cold and good to your teeth:

  I know why I write in this method:

  if I don’t write what I’m thinking

  right then, it slips my mind: yep:

  3115gone for good: sometimes, the next

  day, or several weeks later, I have

  a thought that has an air of

  remembrance about it, and I think,

  gee, this may not be déjà vu exactly

  3120but I think I’ve been down this

  street before: I remember now that

  yesterday morning or this morning

  when I was coming back from the

  campus store with a mocha chip muffin

  3125I was thinking of the word cramp and

  I was thinking how this tape cramps

  my style: it breaks down my extended

  _________

  gestures: it doesn’t give your

  asshole time to reconfigure after a

  3130dump: everything happens before its

  time, interrupted, turned back, cracked

  up: but yesterday or today when I

  thought of cramp, I thought of so

  many mots justes to go with it, but

  3135now I’m trying to remember a memory,

  the words juste neither to this morning

  nor to now: anyhow, I am brittlized,

  run like a cow through a cow dip, my

  flourishes stripped down, my feathers

  3140deflowered: so cramped, my words

  lose letters on the right-hand edge or

  I start typing too early on the left-hand

  side and slice words up: I

  keep thinking, oh, I’ll remember what

  3145that word was supposed to be, but

  I’ve already told you about my memory

  but I figure when I xerox the strip

  onto regular paper, I’ll fill out the

  words in pencil, so a typist can get

  3150it right: what, though, is right:

  wouldn’t it be better to let the words

  come out of and go into breakage in

  the usual way we, too, come and go:

  _________

  wouldn’t it be truer: wouldn’t

  3155accidence be bodied forth into

  revelation: have you ever heard a

  whore moan (hormone?). . . .

  65

  when the trees tug trying to hold

  the wind back (or, more accurately,

  3160when the wind nearly sweeps the

  trees away) do you suppose the

  resistance each leaf, twig, branch,

  trunk puts up and communicates to the

  roots thrusts the earth forward into

  3165faster rotation: or, if not, and

  there are just the right number of

  winds in the right places, does

  contrariety resolve into no effect:

  or take for example, since the earth

  3170takes hold of nothingness in the

  highest atmospheres, is there no pry

  pole (I mean, no station) the pry

  pole can get leverage on: even if

  not, cdn’t it be true that since all

  3175the energy derives from outside the

  system (the sun, for the most part)

  why couldn’t winds persist in certain

  _________

  areas and directions to make the

  earth sail the way ships do, the old

  3180kind of ships or recent racers: just

  so, though the scope collapses, my

  contradictions blow me about but

  perhaps no more than turn me around

  spinning me nowhere, no tours, no

  3185plane or Amtrak trips, just a sort

  of top digging down, screwing in:

  screwed in far enough, I might (wd)

  find turning trying and then the winds

  of my sentiments would just wear

  3190themselves out and me as if I were a

  stob: do I contradict myself, you

  say: well, I get interested in both

  sides of the argument: I am unhappily

  not an either/or person but a

  3195both/and: I have more sides than

  two: I have so many they round off

  like a glazed stob or bead of water:

  enough about me: I sure wish I could

  think about something else

  Part Two: Scat Scan

  66

  3200well, it’s true, clarity is in the extremes,

  whereas truth muddles in the middle: of

  course, nigh onto everyone wants truth to sidle

  over to where clarity is, but on the trip

  qualification trips it and exception douses it

  3205and contradiction split-chunks it and clearly

  what arrives at clarity as truth is so

  yellowed-weak with travail that it is just often

  sent back in disgust on a return trip likely to

  wear it down to nothing: what are we to do:

  3210whew: desperate to make a dollar, some guys

  on the outskirts between farming and

  handymanning will borrow into front-end

  gear for snowplowing and then one or two snows

  fit to plow will hit the whole winter, and the

  3215guys go under: nature is subtler than a pound

  of spiders: and the next winter, likely,

  bankrupt, they sit buried behind their long

  roads, while we, unused, break our backs and

  hearts on shovels: our destructive rage

  3220against the unmercifulness of nature has

  put us in need of saving environmentalists, who

  _________

  have perhaps never happened

  upon a nest of rattlers: we had to

  tear down half the woods to have a door to keep

  3225the wolves away from: don’t tell me that

  fetches of wind and slugs of rain erode the

  fields; where is the cabbage to come from: and

  are we or are we not to give a summit or two

  to the iron ore of skillets: language plays

  3230upon what-is the way light plays on water: it

  is without substance (as light nearly is):

  moving, glancing, dipping, cresting is its

  veracity: the ghoulish light on the water of

  cisterns, tomb-stale: the flitting flickers

  3235of flinty ice crystals nearly too light to

  land: the honey weight of heat waves: evil

  shakes in the shadows it shuns the light to

  find: light apparently travels in the dark

  becoming visible as the object it strikes, even

  3240the deep blue heaven on those sucked-dry

  skinny-bright days the commingling of light

  with atmosphere: (alas,
the once great Mozart

  is now Muzak): my science may be right or

  wrong but telling you about it is the truth:

  3245all this dithery dawdling, I can’t get going

  67

  you scan the surface and not a crevice