by A. R. Ammons
necessarily 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
artist 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
other way further out into the periphery is
to lose hold on the central issues and
become thin, manneristic, too arty, and
mere).
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
through 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,
still 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
in 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
exactly 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
university 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
that 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
definite 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
forms 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
has no further use for oneself, all that
remains is to smell. . . .
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION
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,
this 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
and 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
fame 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
can be swept away in the wind of the slightest
disfavor: well, we are such dust as housemites
husband on, riding microscopic currents in the
stillest parlor air. . . .
UNSIGHTLY HAIR
Sucking Flies
No longer confident of the transfigurations, the
assemblages, piercing coordinations, the wound
unwound into a new winding wound again—now,
I just put in the wording: I give words to the
passing music, taking it as it is, where it goes:
who am I to prevail upon the shallows to reveal
their source materials, the hidden currents,
hidden drives (as the road signs say): what I
am not is a teacher: if Heraclitus, Aristotle,
Bacon, Burke have not taught the world then
teaching doesn’t work, is not the issue: (but
the music gets so flat: the energies of
transforming lift up, tensely integrative, into
new formations young, beautiful: whereas,
merely to go along with scrambling mediocrity
is to defer too much to the world:) oh, how
flat it is (so much so that exclaiming about it
nearly gets a rise out of me): is disillusion
wise, or is it wise to fiddle with fragilities,
little dreams and hopes and foolish beliefs:
there is a smallness runs under things like a
crumbly soil that takes in what remains and
gives back the beauties of the field: our
bodies share these worm-shaken roads: but our
spirit, it is from before and knows no changes
through all the lineations of consequence. . . .
Balsam Firs
With my wife and me, it isn’t so much that we
have used each other up—we really can’t do
that—but that time has used us up: we stand
on the frail end of a long plank where things
get jittery and, because of the uncertainties,
almost new again: but time, time, has built
us so far out, we’re nearly off the ship: we
turn to each other and say, look, there’s
plenty here to do something about, but do you
suppose, so late, it’s worth getting started:
still, life is now as it has always been, such
as it has been, life, and we say let’s get on
with it: colloquial idioms at such times
soften sharpness—or, one might say, run an
iron rod out under the plank: I, myself, am
not much use: I have churned the word mill so
long that I can’t pick out anything from
anything: I’ve said everything and mostly
cared when it sounded good: but my wife is as
solid as a jug or judge: her words, purporting
to mean, are bottom lines: I listen to her:
sometimes, I write down what she says, too:
but getting back to the boat, I’m for running
a few sails up and hooking into the changes:
we’re feeling blustery and the open deep spills
out where the farthest sight is only sea. . . .
Tree-Limbs Down
The poverty of having everything is not
wanting anything: I trudge down t
he mall halls
and see nothing wanting which would pick me
up: I stop at a cheap $79 piece of jewelry,
a little necklace dangler, and it has a diamond
chip in it hardly big enough to sparkle, but it
sparkles: a piece of junk, symbolically vast;
imagine, a life with a little sparkle in it, a
little sparkle like wanting something, like
wanting a little piece of shining, maybe the
world’s smallest ruby: but if you have everything
the big carats are merely heavy with price and
somebody, maybe, trying to take you over: the dull
game of the comers-on, waiting everywhere like
moray eels poked out of holes: what did Christ
say, sell everything and give to the poor, and
immediacy enters; daily bread is the freshest
kind: dates, even, laid up old in larders, are
they sweet: come off sheets of the golden
desert, knees weak and mouth dry, what would
you think of an oasis, a handful of dates, and
a clear spring breaking out from under some stones:
but suppose bread can’t daily be found or no
oasis materializes among the shimmers: lining
the outside of immediacy, alas, is uncertainty:
so the costly part of the crust of morning
bread is not knowing it will be there: it has
been said by others, though few, that nothing
is got for nothing: so I am reconciled: I
traipse my dull self down the aisles of
desire and settle for nothing, nothing wanted,
nothing spent, nothing got.
Wetter Beather
When a person inquires too much into my
condition, I wonder if he searches for ill
or good: as for my typewriter, it will not do
well in a humidity, it takes on a gummy
lethargy, it refuses its spaces, stalling its
keys which, certainly, just fling themselves
idly against a nonchalance: but let a cool
front through or let a heat wave require the
air conditioner and the keys flick along as easily
as thought: this foreknowledge prevents me
from hastening off, heavy manual machine under
my arm or confined upon my hip by the arm,
hastening off, I say, to the repair shop—
a lucky patience because there no longer are
any shops for this device, and few ribbons
around and sparse typewriter paper: I am in
the midst of a technological redoing which
I will not abide till the radiant screens no
longer flicker: but my talent is so expired
that I need not trouble myself with digital
advances, I merely amuse myself in the comfort
of my own surrounding ignorance, with no
intention of publication and, of course, little
hope that others will press me thru the press.
The Gushworks
When what it was is what it is (or when what
it is is what it was) there you have an overlap:
for example, when you blow your nose, you
could, you know, close the handkerchief on the
product: instead, you are likely to open up
to see WHAT IT WAS: was it just a clear
gelatinous blob or a crusty skin shield or a
butterball of gooey glop: or as when you go
to the bathroom, you could flush before rising
but you probably rise before flushing: you
want to see WHAT IT WAS: you want to find out
if what it was going to be can be elicited
into a knowledge of what it now is: like an
oyster-type gob, your nose, I mean: I am a
member of the vertical circle whose arc passes
through a height above nearly all human interest
and whose depth encloses the silences of most
human shame: there is a sense in which the
integrity of the circle is taut throughout,
indifferent to its notches and degrees, as
indifferent as the discourses of my fellows
remain to me: think little of me, I will
think no less of you: the axle goes right
through my ears, and the merriment is in all
the go-round.
Body Marks
Nailing down the cause of anything is not easy:
you notice a prominent strand in the random
weave and think, well, that’s probably it: but
that may be there just to mislead the born or
else it works only in association with a set
of subsets or sublineations and only expensive
time can rectify a balance out of that: I say
why is my hipbone flashing out each step down
my femur this morning when I walked less than
usual yesterday: well, too many stairs: well,
slept on that side all night: well, it’s really
your colon hurting: what? well, remember
last night during that TV drama you had one
leg stretched out to the coffeetable too long:
that could have defined a warp in your bone
pain calls attention to: well, well: you’ve
(I’ve) probably hit on it: which would prove
it out this evening, hanging your leg up there
again or not: that is the question: when in
the second grade, cut on the playground, I,
playing hounds and fox (I was the fox, the slow
boys the hounds) skidded my left knee over the
spike of a buried stump, I got a 3 to 4 inch
slash and nearly passed out: I felt so
important, though: imagine being taken to a
doctor’s office! and all the expensive stuff
was unwound and wound onto me, with taping
and splinting (I almost said splintering):
3 weeks off from school: stitches put in,
torn out by bending the knee, re-stitched, and
you know how it goes when you’re eight: I’m
70 now, and I still can see little white
raisures where the stitches ripped free: you
could know me anywhere: talk about identity:
I’m nobody else except myself, unless somebody
has a mark just like mine (backed up by
another scar (I won’t tell you about now) on
the inside of my left wrist, not an attempt
at anything self-critical:) I’m sure you think
all this is just as important and worthy of
posterity as I do. . . .
Yonderwards
I want to do a painting: I want to slur a raw
shoulder: I want to bruise a man, look into
a woman’s eyes you could travel through
for life as through a galaxy or toward one:
I want paint painting-through rubs out: how
about a sudden lush bush on the right hand side
with a distant small bridge topping it: and
from right top to left bottom a sweep (maybe
water) quickly broadening down: but then a
goat’s head is right up front, on this side of
the river (?) and when you look away and look
back it is all a beautiful woman; perhaps, her
bosom is the moon filling the upper left hand
beyond the river: I want a painting to do me
in: I want to wilt down and supremely recover:
but look what happened to Ozymandias and
EVEN SHELLEY
Depressed Areas
It is one thing to be nobody, but to be nobody
in the South! there is no roping in the rope
ladder and there are no steps in the step: or
you’re let to climb up high enough that a
missing rung will de-characterize your mounting:
or something pressured by your step will fly
up and pop you in the face: the blast will
bust your ast: but if by any vine-swinging
you cling on above the pitfalls and call out,
look, it’s me, I’m way up—why the South will
notice its allowances credited you and now you
“owe something back”—the old give-back back
again: whereas out West the roads are longer
than the wanderers and up north in the City
the homeless sit out among the tall buildings
as noticeable and anonymous as Exxon: (if you
own a little Exxon, no hard feelings): but
who cares, poetry is like a swamp, it will make
up anywhere there’s a bottom: and the great
trees after all whose tops only the sky can
see . . . they topple and the water eats them up:
what do you do when the metaphors are shaping
up to oppose your case: why, end the poem.
Dishes and Dashes
I always wanted (when I was a boy—and even
now) to have a stretch of water, at least a
farm pond or house pond, a little circular
flat thing with fish in it, pike and bream,
sunflowers: something glassy as the sky, that
could fill up with clouds (cloud and could)
that would crash into the banks where among the
sedges and grasses mosquito hawks and dragonflies
would pitch and tilt: the sheen and silver,
the stillness, a patch of lilies maybe, or a
clutch of cattails a redwing might get close
enough to jeer in: but I still have the sky,
deeper than any stillness I could get water to
hold, and the years go by and it clears blue
and breezy: the geese seesaw back and forth,
talking through: (neither a sayer nor a doer
be: be a beer (nonalcoholic)): much of my
sin is not original: a little verbal abuse
(herein demonstrated), a little self-abuse
(which I make a practice of keeping to myself):
a few painful exaggerations and oversights
(lies), etc., a fairly normal menu: more
