The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2

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: