by A. R. Ammons
to turn my armies of words around in or camp
out and hide (bivouac): height to reach up
through the smoke and busted mirrors to clear
views of the beginnings high in the oldest
times: but seriously you know, this way of
seeing things is just a way of seeing things:
time is not crept up on by some accumulative
designer but percolates afresh every day like
a hot cup of coffee: and, Harold, if this is
an Evening Land, when within memory was it
otherwise, all of civilized time a second in
the all of time: good lord, we’re all so
recent, we’ve hardly got our ears scrubbed,
hair unmatted, our teeth root-canaled: so,
shine on, shine on, harvest moon: the computers
are clicking, and the greatest dawn ever is
rosy in the skies.
CAST THE OVERCAST
Informing Dynamics
We don’t live near a stream, but now we do:
the water slipping down the side of the street
would shame many a river with a big name
inscribed on space shots, with a history, with
fish: three or four inches this morning and
more coming: a flotation medium rising in the
basement, alas, a mop and bucket my squeezing
remedy: and Phyllis is off at a funeral:
put down in this much water, one could drown;
at least, get wet: but what does the body
care that has no spirit in it: it has already
drowned in a medium sleep pales before: and
the spirit, even: it was just a bit of
electricity firing off joints and nets: off,
it isn’t there anymore: the body, though, is
but it has taken on the temperature of the
ground and sees no difference in itself: oh,
but the difference to some! a lifetime’s
worth of getting on with life: it is just that
quick cut between getting our monographs
published about horse fever and keeping the drain
free below the rainspout and putting a little
aside for the kids’ education and—BOP—gone:
I have so much trouble with that edge: the
day-to-day plunged into eternity: the look
back then from eternity to the day-to-day:
what was it all about, what was the use, how
did we get so interested, so worried, so
anxious: I say, meaning cannot be criticized
by time: where does time get off: while there
is meaning, there is meaning: meaninglessness
is not the opposite but the absence of
meaning: when anything has served its purpose
it might as well be abandoned, even meaning:
but meaning is really good while it lasts: too
bad you can’t store it up anywhere for a download.
Pyroclastic Flows
I’m on drugs, now: this is the way people on
too much medicinal uplift write: they are
very nearly sorry that they cannot take you
very seriously: they have been rendered
incapable of their own tragedy: they don’t
understand how anyone can hold a strong opinion
or crave a stiff measure: they are the first
to hold themselves up to the mirror of
inconsequence and smile: they don’t grasp
that their ribbons are on a flogging stick:
I say to the man, are you my provider: when
I need the feelings, I get down on my knees
and say, wipe out some of the darkness, put the
jiggle back in: how much is that: the druggist
flips out his counting knife and 5, 10, 15,
there they go, one a day, twice if need be,
only as prescribed: well, it takes a few wks
of flushing and burning to get on them but
then you cool out, you float, you are under
the wings of butterflies: the air, you know,
is not just nothing: it is a medium like the
sea but thinner: things, as fishes in water
do, float in it—mites, and household plants
called yeasts, sundry viral and bacterial
organisms: you’ve seen pictures of those big
catfish breathing thick water: well, we have
our own strainers, blockers, and sort of gills:
already here 70 years, I don’t get too shook
up about what floats in the air: as long as
it’s not me or only my drugs, honey
HARD ASSETTE
Odd Man Out
I’m just an old man in a de-gilded (gelded?) cage: a
bird, too: I think I’m a hornbill: when I
blow hard, I get a horny sound: it whacks
off tree trunks: my friends in the forest
want to know what’s the fuss about: frankly,
I can’t keep it down: I try to hum a lot
instead and look way out into the periphery:
but as to a lodestone or couple of lodestones
my attention wanders back and seizes exigency
out of aura: listen, talk about old: mineral
deposits stiffen old men’s bladder walls: at
the latrine, if you can get started, only,
say, the first level, a third, goes, especially
if you’re in a hurry: you cut it off: the
walls, you know, need to collapse to the
remaining quantity: that takes time: you
could shake away with a bladder hardly spent:
old men have to stand there and soon they can
feel the second level acquire pressure, and
then when they get down to the last dribble
there’s probably half a pint unencircled: we,
you, they have to work at it: but out in the
forest meanwhile the monkeys burble, the floor
viper slides: give it half an hour, then
RAISE A BEAD
Squall Lines
They say of us old people, look, what do you
care, how much do you have to lose: go ahead,
cruise down the Volga and check out Petersburg
or drive into New York City: if you get
blipped off, what’s that: it won’t be long
before you blip off anyhow: why, what has a
25-year-old built up in 25 years that compares
with a 70-year-old’s trove: think of the
perspective, the seasoning, the long loves,
the vigil till enemies die: also, how about
the money, prestige, the real estate: what,
you ask, do the old have to lose, why, more &
more till sitting back in easy splendor they
don’t want to go at all: but the 25-year-old
will complain that if he flips he loses what
he had yet to gain: still wet behind the ears
he doesn’t even know what that is (not that
anyone does): alas, the old have little in
that bank: the young inherit the world, but
we already have it, except we’ve had it. . . .
John Henry
This morning I greeted my wife’s waking with
how’s my little dewberry but, poor thing, the
answer was a rotten sore throat, headache,
upset stomach and, soon determined, 100.2
fever: so I said to her, well, there you are:
sometimes these berries mold or canker on the
vine: an oblong aspirin, coke (potable), half
a slice of toast, and cuddled up in a corner
of the couch with the Ithaca Journal and the
Wall Street Journal she is locating, I hope,
&
nbsp; the road to recovery: but that hacking cough:
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
best, 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:
is 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
buzzard-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
bombed (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
wonder 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
away our ignorance with the world—better
let the mixed up mix and let the surface shine
with all the possibilities, each in itself.
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
govern 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
spaces 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
tizzy: 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
nonchalance: 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
of 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 away into the next
worry of the next storm: hark, the bells are
ringing, the announcements are in preparation,
might as well start singing. . . .
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
find 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
mailboxes, 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
something 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
concrete 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
nebulae unknown: but I’m only me: I have 4
interests—money, poetry, sex, death: I guess
I can jostle those. . .
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
to 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
found 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
back 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:
there’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
to 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
appear: 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
old: 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:
on 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
to 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
find, 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
old, 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
of 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,
this 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
weather 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
or 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
know: it doesn’t know anything.
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
be 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
