by A. R. Ammons
_________
his axle”: I think that was a dirty expression:
if not dirty, brutally suggestive and insulting,
15and take that little gland in the reproductive
works of human males, the one that puts out a
bead of oil to promote penetration: tell me,
is that not as wonderful as an appearance in a
grotto: how did “myself” know that some
20problem outside my body might arise that a
gland should be designed to help ease: a gland
in me to help me ease in her: take anything,
think about it, it blows up in wonder: now, I
can’t call this greaseshooter dirty, it’s so
25splendid, but I don’t want anything to do with
it: I would rather think about the girl’s
collarbone than that and that bone: I just
tell you, it’s amazing: then, there’s oil and
vinegar, oilcloth, etc. but
30THAT’S OIL, FOLKS
America
Eat anything: but hardly any: calories are
calories: olive oil, chocolate, nuts, raisins
—but don’t be deceived about carbohydrates
and fruits: eat enough and they will make you
5as slick as butter (or really excellent cheese,
say, parmesan, how delightful): but you may
_________
eat as much of nothing as you please, believe
me: iceberg lettuce, celery stalks, sugarless
bran (watch carrots, they quickly turn to
10sugar): you cannot get away with anything:
eat it and it is in you: so don’t eat it: &
don’t think you can eat it and wear it off
running or climbing: refuse the peanut butter
and sunflower butter and you can sit on your
15butt all day and lose weight: down a few
ounces of heavyweight ice cream and
sweat your balls (if pertaining) off for hrs
to no, I say, no avail: so, eat lots of
nothing but little of anything: an occasional
20piece of chocolate-chocolate cake will be all
right, why worry: lightning-lit, windswept
firelines scythed the prairies and strung
rivers of clearing through the hardwoods,
disaster renewal, smallish weeds and bushes
25getting their seeds out, grazing attracting
rabbits and buffalo, the other big light
shining in steady. . . .
In View of the Fact
The people of my time are passing away: my
wife is baking for a funeral, a 60-year-old who
_________
died suddenly, when the phone rings, and it’s
Ruth we care so much about in intensive care:
5it was once weddings that came so thick and
fast, and then, first babies, such a hullabaloo:
now, it’s this that and the other and somebody
else gone or on the brink: well, we never
thought we would live forever (although we did)
10and now it looks like we won’t: some of us
are losing a leg to diabetes, some don’t know
what they went downstairs for, some know that
a hired watchful person is around, some like
to touch the cane tip into something steady,
15so nice: we have already lost so many,
brushed the loss of ourselves ourselves: our
address books for so long a slow scramble now
are palimpsests, scribbles and scratches: our
index cards for Christmases, birthdays,
20Halloweens drop clean away into sympathies:
at the same time we are getting used to so
many leaving, we are hanging on with a grip
to the ones left: we are not giving up on the
congestive heart failure or brain tumors, on
25the nice old men left in empty houses or on
the widows who decide to travel a lot: we
think the sun may shine someday when we’ll
drink wine together and think of what used to
_________
be: until we die we will remember every
30single thing, recall every word, love every
loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter
and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way. . . .
Get Over It
I guess old men aren’t really good for nothing:
they can cuddle, shuffle, and look
about for where it all went: harmless, they
are attractive, gently innocent, on park benches
5or subways, or on the slow side of streets:
women are reassured by them; they are witnesses
without danger, guardian angels: out of the
game, earnings free, they are what they earned
before: they hardly compete at all: their toothless
10mouths need no upkeep, no reconstructions,
no root canals or extraordinary measures:
it doesn’t matter if their piss-burnt pants
stiffen up or if they seldom shave or use much
hot water: they are wonderfully inexpensive:
15unless, of course, something goes wrong: they
just hang out on corners or in alleys, useless,
apologetic, inexcusable, supernumerary,
invisible among the seeing: what good is a mess
_________
of stuff on its way out, nearly out: get on
20out, you might say, you’re taking up room:
but old men are good examples to the young of
what becomes of things: working, loving,
buying, living the dynamics, many can look
down the steep gradient of the slope to where
25the rubbish edges the river and then reaffirmed
they can look back into the lights and run
along to do their parts: when I started this
piece, I intended under the guise of praise
to pour the world’s contempt on old men, but
30I wasn’t clever enough to modulate it gradually
the way, say, Shakespeare moves easefully
through changing weathers: but at times, old
men will look up at the world, raise an eyebrow
and smile a small smile hard to read.
(1997)
Tail Tales
Old men drain and dread and dream and dress
and dribble and drift and drink and drip and
drone and drool and droop and drop and drown
and drowse, dry, and dry up: I won’t show my
5obvious hand and do anymore with this: I can’t
stand to be noticed for just carrying something
out: except, of course, at a carry-out or if
the chamber pot needs to be carried out: but,
_________
I mean, just to do something, without the risk
10of running into breaks, barricades, burdens
or barristers—what lift can such drudgery
sustain, no, what lift can sustain such
drudgery: I was scanning the other day when
I hit on this show with Alan Brinkley: I
15liked him so much, I went to the bookstore to
get a book but all they had was the one on
the New Deal, which I didn’t care for—I
wanted to read him on something slightly more
philosophical, summary, or theoretical: but
20he was so quick to catch on (not that it’s
probably hard to outgrasp Schlesinger or
Galbraith) and he understood the other points
of view better than the other points of
view
did but still didn’t like them, didn’t prefer
25them to his own: well, you can see, if you
add insight, gentleness, evidence to all that
why I would get interested: I’m sure I
demonstrate in my own practice a sheer flow of
the viable juice, so no wonder I recognize a
30river of it in another: not that antiquity
has perjured sense in S & G: they cut about
them smartly: really valuable old men. . . .
Fuel to the Fire, Ice to the Floe
In knee boots men work at the street grilles
to plunge flow through the leaves plugging the
storm drains: what I mean is, it rained a lot
and you know when it does autumn leaves wash
5down the runoff and get stuck in the drains,
plug up the drains till the water backs up
and elongates lakes along the street or fits
nicely into concrete-boundaried corners: but
if the language doesn’t caper or diddle, who
10cares what the water does or if the men get in
over their boots: I have the same clogging
problems with my gutterspouts (among other
things): this guy put in a sieve to keep the
leaves out of the pipe when the opaque sieve
15reduced the flow to zero and the gutters
overspilled: I am a patient man and can—
though just barely—afford some experimentation
but after a while I’d just as soon move somewhere
else, Arizona or the Sahara: I just can’t
20take it when things do not go right, although
I patiently grit my teeth and persist in calm:
trouble is it all breaks out at night, some
kind of itching or bowel contraction or loose
saliva: anyway, it seemed like a poetic
_________
25thing to think of, the men in their yellow
raingear and black hipboots looking down
trying to find an open bottom to a pond, with
it still raining, etc., you know.
(1997)
Suet Pudding, Spotted Dick
All well and good for autonomy that it find
its way into the full array of itself—good
or evil: that it achieve (whether poem or
self) whatever standing defense can carve out
5of imposition or inner resources can assert:
but what of it if one thing, uncompromised,
unassaulted by the world’s mixtures, stands
out alone in the glorious testament of itself:
what good is it if it cannot bend to use:
10is being, however fully realized, enough: one
can be in oneself alone and each of us must,
of necessity, so be alone each in the measure
of himself: but only when one’s self engages
other selves does whatever is apply: and what
15will application (wyrcan) to search out among
the diversities of others a riding autonomy:
an autonomy that will ride over, do what it
can, invoke, say, justice, liberty, wellbeing
_________
for all (or many, or as many as possible,
20some?): hidden by leaves on the limber end
of a twig all summer, the hornet’s nest is now, after
fall, the only thing in the tree: except for
a scrap of leaves blown in from the oak close
by: but where are the hornets, are they in
25there: is there more endangerment in summer
than winter notice: I hope the plague of the
bee mites will pass this year: I sure did
miss the bees, the honeybees, the flower people.
Focal Lengths
I’m largely a big joke: if somebody else
doesn’t make a crack about me, I do: the
burn center in me is too steady a place to
dwell in: I go by there, throw rocks, and
5laugh my head off when the windows splinter:
kaplooey: what kind of little nerd is doing
a little serious reading in there: what is
this, a library: then, I roar: all that
faked up type lining shelves like boot camp
10drills: what does it have to do with anything:
did I take my bristled nest of humiliations
to heart: what kind of dunce keeps a fire
going like this: what do people mean coming
to hell to warm themselves: well, it is
_________
15warm: the fire, stoked by whatever, is truly
burning: so, that’s the way I am: I just
can’t keep it straight: people melt down in
the heat sometimes and weep: I just don’t
know what to do: I just jump-start my pickup
20and drive off: I just declare to goodness:
but I know something about burning, myself:
better laugh it off: better not believe it:
better not think it’s real: it’s not real:
it’s so cool: actually, it’s nothing: it’s just
25nothing: crack it up: make it go away.
1996 (1997)
Sibley Hall
The gingko’s so all-gold you want to put it in
the bank, but the beautiful young girl having
her sandwich on the steps of the art building
said to me, it loses all its leaves at once:
5so much gold!
(1997)
Good God
It used to flick up so often, I called it
flicker: but now, drooping, it nods awake
or, losing it, slips back asleep: I say,
stand up there, man, but, you know, it’s only
_________
5me, and it takes no threat to heart, so to
speak: it’s lazier than a sick dog that won’t
lift his head to sniff the wind: it has
always amused me as a serviceable irony that
the spirit, which is without substance, can
10move the flesh: a thought, a sight, a scent
frizzing the wires of the mind (sounds like
substance) and the thing, you know the thing,
just reacts, warms, fills, lengthens, hardens
without hands or lips, without touch: so we
15must think of the spirit as a matter of great
force and be mindful that while it works it
works wondrously but later on in life, say,
the spirit may be willing and the flesh weak,
as you’ve heard said: you could suppose the
20spirit at that point not very willing or it
could come up with something: or perhaps the
thing, long asleep, has fallen out of use: a
day of radical separation, a realization that
puts you back before the world began—alone:
25the walls of the grave your only embrace, and
the soil you lie on all that lies on you: my
goodness: fortunately, there are remedies—
implants, injections, dirty magazines: the
world is sometimes so well provided with 2nd
30or 3rd chances, we must be amazed at the
_________
thoughtfulness of so many applied to so wide
a scope of possibility and give the pisspoor
thing a chance. . . .
Genetic Counseling
