by A. R. Ammons
blade of
the blade at
your back
5has caught me
between the
shoulderblades
so often
it’s carved
10out a little
place for itself,
my metal
1975 (1975)
Arete
Real education makes
fate choice, gives
to the ongoing not
obstruction but
5uninterfering and supporting
will,
this fate to be swayed
within the limits of its dominant direction
this way a little or that
10so the greatest
accommodation
of
means comes
into play,
15the full functioning forth:
if a man is plain
he can announce his struggle
to be plain
and join a war for accuracy:
20if he is thick, slow to move,
let him
announce
the assimilation of quickness to slow stir,
vice not vice but countercurrency.
1973 (1975)
Away
I take myself too seriously,
don’t I, I said
to the stream where it bent
as if into a poplar stand
5around a boulder away: I take
myself so
seriously, I said, I dream
of wind that
unwinds freely and of late snow
10on warm rocks:
I mean, I said to the stream,
I dream of
turning out of sight, jiggling
over a spill of shale
15or shattering misty into falls:
oh, no, the stream
called, departing, dream of rock, rock!
1975 (1976)
A Bit of the Bubbly for Ep Fogel
Even the great sea turns,
turning, brushing the land masses, turns
around a center of itself
amassing
5more & more centrally,
densely
within its circumferences
whatever, undone, comes apart, floats
light in the light—
10colonies of seaweed like sheep
fenced in by the fencerows of motion
form is the shape of motion
form is the course of events
form is the bending round
15on itself of action (no motion in art,
which can’t be still)
art
flakes off,
reduces to wind and touch,
20rusts, gets moisture-warps, contracts
worms in its threads, moles
under its pillars:
the ghastly pretension,
fake stillness afire with change
25(in nature
motions recur, not the same motions,
but figures of motion recur
and spell
our chances right)
30the hollyhock pod is (its rim-stack
of seeds) designed
to be unsuccessful,
that is, to
give a little here,
35release a few there,
crack some but
hold on,
go through a long scattering
of failure,
40the seeds loosed into
a whole windrose
of highs and lows:
designed to give up design,
while a sonnet will drop nothing,
45not a syllable,
and bust or hold all its rhymes
you can’t flow the same brook by twice
(in winter I go around at the windows
shopping for sunlight) (anyone with
50anything to
say has
sense enough
not to
say it)
55Ep, these are today’s
notes for your birthday: the notes
are not about
you but are now:
how many years are you up to:
60I’ve known a dozen of them—
imagine,
a dozen of your years and mine,
the same dozen:
I wish you dozens more, a gross:
65I lean the
rake into
the fork of
a free
low maple
70branch
while I bunch its
past burdens
(1976)
An Improvisation for Goldwin Smith
We turn away from knowing
to the sham called education:
(extinguish the immeasurable by
the trifling measurable)
5the burn of time,
the fry of space,
the answering energies
in ourselves,
from these we turn away to exegesis,
10we tell it out, talk it out, talk
it away:
we suck statements from the
orders of art
to keep the art distanced,
15the burn contained,
to keep statement from drying up:
we are here in this place
where to notice nothing
is adjustment,
20to feel nothing is sanity,
to grow, in the great motion,
still:
to substitute for what is made
what we have made:
25to settle down
in the hurry of time
as if to find eternity in a minute:
to gain
where everything is awash with
30change
the majestic vision of constancy:
to fill the past so full of
perception it can’t pass away,
to look into the future
35so that when it comes it will be
a second coming, familiar,
not to know
that only this instant is
and that it is
40going through us from what was
not to what was
blurred out of perception by passage:
education is the blinding:
being here is
45pretending one is somewhere else:
knowing is substituting something
for knowing:
alas, the dull do well: an
apparent lifelessness adds to life:
50seldom is to burn to the burn
to be polished, not incinerated:
these mysteries are
too troublesome:
time and space, matter
55and disposition, wind
and rock, water, the
dull metal, these are the
universe of death
which like wellsprings
60beget life and life begets
mind and mind then wants
to get loose, to found
a residence clear of
time and space,
65matter, passage, to escape
free to eternity: ah,
the mind comes of a
mix, its roots mingle
all the way into the
70stone, its flowers drink
from the deep springs of
motion:
at ten snow (grit)
will as if sift
75right out of the
humidity
cloud or no cloud
an invention
(1977)
For Robert Penn Warren
We praise the mind for
how high it goes
without losing hold
and how wide
5it goes without
blurring
and for how sharply it can
relish a particular
without losing the
> 10dispositions: in this
fine war-zone
between the great energies,
this narrowing that
allows life’s widest play,
15often no more than a
man or two can stand,
dealing: how thankful we
are for this one such!
1976 (1977)
Man’s Nature
My hands, he said,
are bundles
of sticks afire
with pain: my eye,
5one, wanders,
making a wanderer
the other: my
dancing bone
lacks the carriage
10to thrust: I
see, I see, the
brook declared,
reaching out in
a bend for
15anything to take away,
when the old man
sucked it up and spat
it into the skies.
(1977)
The Grave Is
The grave is
confining
but not
when you consider how much
5room you need to work in
there
_________
nature apparently intended
(as such intentions go)
that we gatherings, knots,
10dense coordinations should
not be held tight
after death,
wrapped up and resistant,
but should be obliged
15to surrender to wide
scattering, underground
brooklets heaving
small chunks of us away,
worm residues become worm
20castings caught up on
the wind, mixed in far
places: even
to fall into the lips of
the sea and moil:
25or be snared by a root,
sucked up, mingled with trees:
that immortality of going &
coming forever, of course,
differs from wanting to stay
30here forever when you come:
(language similarly ties, knots,
winds, loosens, maintaining
the hardness and motion of sense:
nonsense would be like
35throwing up your hands and
forgetting it or walking off
the field mad, sitting spitting
in the bull pen)
those who would be
40poets are would be
poets, not poets: they’ve
seen the glory but
haven’t felt the brunt:
those who have felt
45the brunt are terrified
and half-ashamed of the glory:
some born miserable to be
miserable
sing of their being,
50reconciling or easing by song:
they think poetry
an offshoot of the wide ruin
of their confronted, stumped selves:
they think anyone capable
55of wordless song&dance would choose it
people send me their poems
for truthtellen but they don’t want
the truth so much as they want
what they want to be made to
60sound like the truth, as by
its novel or brilliantly
certifying succinctness
or as by an authoritative
fount, belief running that
65whatever comes out is or, just
as well, will do for
gospel:
under certain rare canopies
(as jousting tents of the
70medieval fields, that which
is said to the maiden
agrees with the heart as much
as with the prick) one may
tell the true-truth, that the
75poems are marvelous, but the
recipient may not be able
to distinguish true-truth from truth:
it seems just that by the time
the truth is told, cotton
80of deceiving having become
all-cushioning, the truth is
lost in its curvings:
famous poets, oft
beseeched, praise
85youths to the limit, every
one “the best thing I’ve
seen,” “the best poet now
writing in American,” “major
delightfulness”:
90imagine how good that makes
everybody feel
including the one real poet
to be praised
though he is the one to
95have picked the rhetoric off
the seed
(cottonpicker)
life is made not to be
just or true but not
100to stop
millions born new each year
to suckle illusions,
bloom into ignorance, forget
that anything need
105be said, unwinders merciful
in airy nonchalance
a young poet wrote “everybody
wants something, and I am
no exception”
110he listed three ways I could twist
the judgments of others and
extend his range
but one who is no exception
is no poet, why fool with him,
115I am writing my poems
I have my work
it is not his work
I have not asked him to do my work
if I do not have to do his
120work I may have time to do mine
but whose work will it be if
he has a dozen people doing
his work for him
patchy valley fog (I’m surprised
125to be here at all and
astonished I won’t be here long)
why hide anything,
all is(it’s so dry the only
hidden, thedrops of water birds
130pebble acan find are crickets
polished sphinx,and honeysuckle berries)
why obfuscate the
impenetrable
light blinds: darkness opens
135the eyes
(1977)
An Improvisation for Fran Bullis
The brook is snowed over met,
here and there stained through
by melt-ice: but
so muffled I passed it
5not hearing the no-sound
only to become aware, having
passed on, of an absence, gap
behind me, unfulfilled event,
non-ruffles:
10I loop walking beyond the brook but
recross it on the way back in the stem of
the loop so
I stopped and listened closely to
the white consolidation
15and heard working away
flight under ice
the truth is I’m a liar
I sprinkle along the welded
furrows of seams
20grit lye
I lay fine powder into responsive
cracks
I wedge warps out
so they can’t loosen straight
25I uncharacterize nails
hammering out their through-points
the truth is my interest is
not in altering wing so & so,
propping up portico so & so,
30taking the sway out of beam line so & so,
though there is nothing
I would not undo (or redo to undo)
but not by design
my design is to collapse beyond
35recognition or the siftings, brushings,
combings of history
the structure that is and is
steel of intention against me,
claw of concrete against me
40if I co
uld slide the ethical
developments of this time
to the floe’s edge
and let the great weight
capsize,
45find hurry to the bottom
I would
the dumb can be blessed, the severest
effort bringing others
no closer than the damned
50inquire into in order to render asunder:
having labored against
think what delight when the springwater
to plunge for is found,
buckets of water tugged off broken shiny,
55consummations and forwardings,
each (harming none) to know
the free use of his feelings
I have no hope of success:
my revolution turns me funny and innocent
60when I would wish to say
the serious word that does not eschew
its consequences
I talk of brooks
I don’t talk seriously of what is
65taken seriously
I leave that out, a great hole,
it is none of my business:
for brooks, for my talk of brooks,
read what I have written above:
70brooks translate the world I call for:
my revolution counts every snowflake
the hedge catches
_________
though the ground is white
the interruptions of trees, bushbrush,
75stalks, vines
darkenings like paintings on white paper!
I settle here on this stretch
of oblivion,
begin to stain:
80never mind,
this place will be re-bleached:
now it is nearly black with home
I remember an oilstove (kerosene) we ordered out
of the Spiegel catalog, the day it came,
85the bluebeading burners, the getting a fire
without having to start wood, the
incredible smallness
and thinness of it compared with the
old, cold, thick iron stove: got it for
90seven dollars and something: I don’t
think we ever did much good with it:
