by A. R. Ammons
dry, unyielding, nothing getting up: feathers:
this train has run out of track pppsssssstttt. . . .
Rogue Elephant
The reason to be autonomous is to stand there,
a cleared instrument, ready to act, to search
the moral realm and actual conditions for what
needs to be done and to do it: fine, the
5best, if it works out, but if, like a gun, it
comes in handy to the wrong choice, why then
you see the danger in the effective: better
then an autonomy that stands and looks about,
negotiating nothing, the supreme indifferences:
10is anything to be gained where as much is lost
and if for every action there is an equal and
opposite reaction has the loss been researched
_________
equally with the gain: you can see how the
milling actions of millions could come to a
15buzzard-like glide as from a coincidental,
warm bottom of water stuck between chilled
peaks: it is not so easy to say, okay, go on
out and act: who, doing what, to what or
whom: just a minute: should the bunker be
20bombed (if it stores gas): should all the
rattlers die just because they rattle: if I
hear the young gentleman vomiter roaring down
the hall in the men’s room, should I go and
inquire of him, reducing him to my care: no
25wonder the great sayers (who say nothing) sit
about in inaccessible states of mind: no
wonder still wisdom and catatonia appear to
exchange places occasionally: but if anything
were easy, our easy choices soon would carry
30away our ignorance with the world—better
let the mixed up mix and let the surface shine
with all the possibilities, each in itself.
(1998)
Mouvance
Hilarity and sour scorn typify my reactions to
passions of the moment: I mean, seeing people
_________
expend themselves into fugitive extremes, it
speaks poorly of the power of the mind to
5govern any kind of distances: until you
consider that passions, except in intense
subduals too longrange to bear, only come in
moments, so if you are to get any passion out
of life, you’ll have to dig it out of narrow
10spaces or squeeze all you have into slender,
if deep, circumstance: I myself have never
known what to do about anything: as I look
back, I see not even a clown but a clown’s
clothes flapping on the clothesline of some
15tizzy: is it really wise so to anticipate
and prepare for the storm, so to gauge it in
terms of other storms, that when the fierce
lightning breaks and high wind falls blunt
against you you just look away with a numb
20nonchalance: what about the splintering free
of the green branches, the bubbly pelt and
spray of windy rain on sudden pools, what
about the vigorous runaway of rivulets finding
themselves: what, what, did not the vibrance
25of the ground in that thud click your teeth:
think of the tranquillity, all passion spent,
when the passion passes and you lie back in
a relief of sweet feeling: whereas, unspent
_________
you would just growl your way into the next
30worry of the next storm: hark, the bells are
ringing, the announcements are in preparation,
might as well start singing. . . .
(1998)
Called Into Play
Fall fell: so that’s it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads
and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to
5find something to write about I haven’t already
written away: I will have to stop short, look
down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should I think: should I
figure colors and outlines, given forms, say
10mailboxes, or should I try to plumb what is
behind what and what behind that, deep down
where the surface has lost its semblance: or
should I think personally, such as, this week
seems to have been crafted in hell: what: is
15something going on: something besides this
diddledeediddle everyday matter-of-fact: I
could draw up an ancient memory which would
wipe this whole presence away: or I could fill
_________
out my dreams with high syntheses turned into
20concrete visionary forms: Lucre could lust
for Luster: bad angels could roar out of perdition
and kill the AIDS vaccine not quite
perfected yet: the gods could get down on
each other; the big gods could fly in from
25nebulae unknown: but I’m only me: I have 4
interests—money, poetry, sex, death: I guess
I can jostle those. . . .
(1997)
Back-Burnerd
No sooner do I say I don’t do something than I
do: no sooner do I say I believe something
than I don’t: the minute something comes up
clear, behind me it goes: it no longer seems
5to be surrounding: it wasn’t till I saw it
that I saw it was a basket or bucket not big
enough to hold enough: and anyhow when
one is in the habit of looking for something
how do you find something to do after you’ve
10found something, why, look for something else:
I guess we’re pushed ahead into what we call
progress, hoping: I’m soaring today like a
dead mole: I have as much get up and go as a
rock bottom: the point of it all has folded
_________
15back into a parachute drag: the narrative
has cracked, too brittle for bridges:
my father, begetting my coming hither, begat
my leave: my mother bore me between two legs
but hence between twelve I will slowly go:
20there’s nothing like nothing on a hungover
morning: they say: I don’t drink: it’s
just that phrases come to me: I think, what
can I do with this: into the trash, a possibility:
but I’m a saver, I hold on: having something
25to hold on to for an old man, even if it’s like
a turkey snood or slack eelette, is better
than a smooth cutoff of things: we must not
leave the hapless helpless hopeless: who
knows when the next beautiful morning will
30appear: for sure. . . .
A Few Acres of Shiny Water
I guess anything gets old: being rich, yep,
pretty soon it’s old—occasional pleasant
spurts of realization, then—celebrity, a big
ox in your way wherever you turn, that gets
5old: having nothing to do gets old in a hurry,
going from having something to do to not being
able to find anything to do, I’ll say: being
in love, oh, dear, even that, about the third
_________
month, gets old as hell, all those re-arisings:
10on the bestseller list—great the first week,
also the second week; then it’s every week,
expected, tedious, getting old: market up,
wow, up again, oh, boy, still up, up and up,
I see, okay, really: you are finally thought
15to be as good a poet as you thought—so; so
what, what is a poet: even getting old gets
old, the novelty aches and pains, surprising
and scary at first, they don’t wear off but
the novelty does: finding, and trying to
20find, something new gets old: find a new
risk to take, a new cliff to sail off from,
pretty soon it’s a drag to get all the way to
Nepal or a Filipino trench: telling about
getting old and everything getting old gets
25old, I’ll tell you, it sure does. . . .
[They said today would be partly cloudy]
They said today would be partly cloudy: I’d
like to see the other part: this part is
clearly apparent, which is to say, cloudy:
alas, that ever flakes were snow: the effect
5of lake effect snow is in dawn’s early light
about five inches, the plows not out, the
_________
birds not singing, the muffled night turned
to bleached silence: but what do we here
expect, why, this: but a partly day promised,
10this whole one so far is flurried: have
you ever thought how the weather, of which
there is such a tedious plenty, especially
when nothing happens for months, say, no rain
or no sun, have you ever thought how the
15weather is just the planet carrying on, an
atmospheric thing native to these millions
of turnings in space: I mean, that it has
no reference to us: the weather is its weather:
it doesn’t even know that the roads are slick
20or deep or that the hill roads are sliding
passageways into ditches and brambles: it
isn’t aware that someone is tangled in a
drift or that a big drift is sliding down on
someone: it’s just amazing how much it doesn’t
25know: it doesn’t know anything.
(1998)
Feint Praise
The world has dealt (nothing personal)
outrageously with me: now, I deal back: it’s
like arguing with the head-chopper, though, where can
it get me: I guess I could get to where I’d
_________
5be saying, look, sir, do you fully realize what
you’re doing: is there any room for
negotiation here, like, your head or mine:
(when an artist, say, striving to be normal,
isn’t, there you have genuine stuff: not
10necessarily the best stuff: but, how much
better to replace the unachievable with the
inadvertent: this is what an artist means
when he says he’s not responsible for his
genius, it just happens: but, alas, if the
15artist quite normal enough strives to be
weird, the shocking falsity wears so thin a
sheen it’s soon hardly shocking and far more
dismissible:) (the material in the preceding
parenthesis is worth thinking on): (to go the
20other way further out into the periphery is
to lose hold on the central issues and
become thin, manneristic, too arty, and
mere).
(1998)
Surfacing Surface Effects
A small moon nearly melted in the almost-morning
night, I arise and thank God I can get up:
(we used to use paper napkins but lately my
wife has taken to pulling upscale cloth napkins
_________
5through wooden rings but since we don’t want
to soil the cloth napkins, we now have no
napkins at all): dawn turns the moon into a
crust of bumpy ice, and I go out paled by
reality to face the world, the world again,
10still there (thank goodness, but still there):
the smallest crevices and narrowest alleyways
of pleasure microscopic nearly in the wide
blank recalcitrance, a scope: (the weatherman
said he would give us the causes of the changes
15in the weather when what we wanted was
CHANGES IN THE CAUSES)
Free One, Get One By
I’m over and done with: disengaged, I’m up
for grabs: if you want me, you can have me,
floating: I’m useless to any use; having none, ready for
any direction: (this is not
5exactly the way I heard myself saying this
on the way to the typewriter: the first
part sounds right, but then something ever so
slightly fancy feeds a little rot in—oh, but
that reminds me, one of the urinals at the
10university is out of order and a blank sheet
has been hung over it saying OUT OF ORDER but
I think some leftover piss, hidden in there,
_________
has rotted: so I was thinking yesterday
of ROTTEN PISS: imagine, rotten piss: even
15that rots—and smells: stinks: stand next
to it, it cuts your breath off (and your piss)
one knows, of course, what things come to, an
end, bobbing free, fortunately, in
when: one on the row, say, wouldn’t want a
20definite date, would he (she): but how rude
to have the head man just walk in on you,
possibly in your underwear, and say, hurry up:
please, it’s time: what, no time to lift off
the prepared speeches like balloons, airy
25forms fingering the precincts of heaven for
mercy: mercy, mercy: what could one do then
but cast off into terror and restraint as
filling as any significant finish: over and
done with, available to the stars, one
30has no further use for oneself, all that
remains is to smell. . . .
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION
(1998)
Dumb Clucks
Up, O Nothing, where the coming together of
everything ends everything, the aboriginal
emptiness, source of all beginnings, where
spirit at last totally prevails, up there,
5this awing site the brain sees, does it need
a universe to back it up and, if not, is it
anything but a wisp, or are universe and wisp,
one and another kind of disappearance again
all one: who cares: here, one is wed to two
10and the outbreak of things into sweetness and
pain binds and frees us: what, after all, is
greater than the toe of a child, and does any
truth supercede a gushingly ripe pear or
peach or collection of grape pulps: one’s
15fame in the hands of a reviewer is not so much
a spur as a poniard: it is seldom the case
that praise has so o’erswelled (o’erswollen)
one that the doctor prescribes daggers: one
sustains oneself on mice- and chickenfeed and
20can be swept away in the wind of the slightest
