The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1 Read online

  loose in the medium:

  remove the water,

  letting down dams: in pike pools,

  maybe looking for bait, dip

  40the water out,

  concentrate the residue, increase

  the incidence (you can

  catch fry

  with your hands then, clutching

  45the silver lights against the mud:)

  if you can’t remove

  the water, change it, as

  by muddying: swamp

  ponds yield their fruit to this:

  50churn up the bottom,

  suffocate the brim,

  bluegills, “flowers,” so they

  rise to breathe:

  seining

  55then is good: it

  ridding lets the water through,

  thickens the impermeables:

  (you round-up a tiger,

  isolate a compound, the same way:

  60surrounding, eliminating the habitat and

  closing in

  on a center or pass

  or tiger-run along a river:)

  IV.

  the men rise from sand and sleep,

  65wheel the boat,

  strung like a turtle

  under a giant cart,

  to the sea’s edge:

  dropped free,

  70the oared boat

  leaps, nosing into the surf,

  and spilling

  the net astern,

  semicircles back

  75to land:

  hauled in, the net is

  a windrow of fish,

  gathered into thin, starving air,

  the ocean, sucking, returned whole

  80to itself, separation complete,

  fish from sea, tiger

  from jungle, vision from experience.

  1959 (1962)

  River

  I shall

  go down

  to the deep river, to the moonwaters,

  where the silver

  5willows are and the bay blossoms,

  to the songs

  of dark birds,

  to the great wooded silence

  of flowing

  10forever down the dark river

  silvered at the moon-singing of hidden birds:

  27 March

  the forsythia is out,

  sprawling like

  15yellow amoebae, the long

  uneven branches—pseudo-

  podia—

  angling on the bottom

  of air’s spring-clear pool:

  20shall I

  go down

  to the deep river, to the moonwaters,

  where the silver

  willows are and the bay blossoms,

  25to the songs

  of dark birds,

  to the great wooded silence

  of flowing

  forever down the dark river

  30silvered at the moon-singing of hidden birds.

  c. 1955–1960 (1960)

  Motion for Motion

  Watched on the sandy, stony bottom of the stream

  the oval black shadow of the waterbeetle, shadow

  larger than beetle, though no blacker, mirroring

  at a down and off angle motion for motion, whirl, run:

  5(if I knew the diameters

  of oval and beetle, the

  depth of the stream, several

  indices of refraction

  and so forth

  10I might say why

  the shadow outsizes the

  beetle—

  I admit to mystery

  in the obvious—

  15but now that I remember some

  I think the shadow

  included the bent water where

  the beetle rode, surface

  tension, not breaking, bending

  20under to hold him up,

  the deformation recorded in shade:

  for light, arising from so far away,

  is parallel

  through a foot of water

  25(though edge-light

  would

  make a difference—a beetle can

  exist among such differences

  and do well):

  30someone has a clear vision of it all,

  exact to complete existence;

  loves me when I swear and praise

  and smiles, probably, to see me

  wrestle with sight

  35and gain no reason from it, or money,

  but a blurred mind overexposed):

  caught the sudden gust of a catbird, selfshot

  under the bridge and out into my sight: he splashed

  into the air near a briervine, lit:

  40I don’t know by what will: it was clear sailing

  on down the stream

  and prettier—a moss-bright island made two streams

  and then made one and, farther, two fine birches

  and a lot of things to see: but he stopped

  45back to me,

  didn’t see me, hopped on through the vines, by some

  will not including me . . .

  and then there were two beetles, and later three at

  once swimming in the sun, and three shadows,

  50all reproduced, multiplied without effort

  or sound, the unique beetle—and I—lost to an

  automatic machinery in things, duplicating, without

  useful difference, some changeless order extending

  backward beyond the origin of earth,

  55changeless and true, even before the water fell, or

  the sun broke, or the beetle turned, or the still

  human head bent from a bridge-rail above to have a look.

  1961 (1963)

  Identity

  1)An individual spider web

  identifies a species:

  an order of instinct prevails

  through all accidents of circumstance,

  5though possibility is

  high along the peripheries of

  spider

  webs:

  you can go all

  10around the fringing attachments

  and find

  disorder ripe,

  entropy rich, high levels of random,

  numerous occasions of accident:

  152)the possible settings

  of a web are infinite:

  how does

  the spider keep

  identity

  20while creating the web

  in a particular place?

  how and to what extent

  and by what modes of chemistry

  and control?

  25it is

  wonderful

  how things work: I will tell you

  about it

  because

  30it is interesting

  and because whatever is

  moves in weeds

  and stars and spider webs

  and known

  35is loved:

  in that love,

  each of us knowing it,

  I love you,

  for it moves within and beyond us,

  40sizzles in

  winter grasses, darts and hangs with bumblebees

  by summer windowsills:

  I will show you

  the underlying that takes no image to itself,

  45cannot be shown or said,

  but weaves in and out of moons and bladderweeds,

  is all and

  beyond destruction

  because created fully in no

  50particular form:

  if the web were perfectly pre-set,

  the spider could

  never find

  a perfect place to set it in: and

  55if the web were

  perfectly adaptable,

  if freedom and possibility were without limit,

  the web would

  lose its special identity:

  60the row-strung garden web

  keeps order at th
e center

  where space is freest (interesting that the freest

  “medium” should

  accept the firmest order)

  65and that

  order

  diminishes toward the

  periphery

  allowing at the points of contact

  70entropy equal to entropy.

  1961 (1963)

  What This Mode of Motion Said

  You will someday

  try to prove me wrong

  (I am the wings when you me fly)

  to replace me with some mode

  5you made

  and think is right:

  I am the way by

  which you prove me

  wrong,

  10the reason you

  reason against me:

  I change shape,

  turn easily into the shapes you make

  and even you

  15in moving

  I leave, betray:

  what has not yet been imagined has been

  imagined by me

  whom you honor, reach for—

  20change unending though

  slowed into nearly limited modes:

  question me and I

  will give you an answer

  narrow and definite

  25as the question

  that devours you (the exact

  is a conquest of time that time vanquishes)

  or vague as wonder

  by which I elude you:

  30pressed

  for certainty

  I harden to a stone,

  lie unimaginable in meaning

  at your feet,

  35leave you less

  certainty than you brought, leave

  you to create the stone

  as any image of yourself,

  shape of your dreams:

  40pressed too far

  I wound, returning endless

  inquiry

  for the pride of inquiry:

  shapeless, unspendable,

  45powerless in the actual

  which I rule, I

  will not

  make deposits in your bank account

  or free you from bosses

  50in little factories,

  will not spare you insult, will not

  protect you from

  men who

  have never heard of modes, who

  55do not respect me

  or your knowledge of me in you;

  men I let win,

  their thin tight lips

  humiliating my worshippers:

  60I betray

  him who gets me in his eyes and sees

  beyond the fact

  to the motions of my permanence.

  1961

  Still

  I said I will find what is lowly

  and put the roots of my identity

  down there:

  each day I’ll wake up

  5and find the lowly nearby,

  a handy focus and reminder,

  a ready measure of my significance,

  the voice by which I would be heard,

  the wills, the kinds of selfishness

  10I could

  freely adopt as my own:

  but though I have looked everywhere,

  I can find nothing

  to give myself to:

  15everything is

  magnificent with existence, is in

  surfeit of glory:

  nothing is diminished,

  nothing has been diminished for me:

  20I said what is more lowly than the grass:

  ah, underneath,

  a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:

  I looked at it closely

  and said this can be my habitat: but

  25nestling in I

  found

  below the brown exterior

  green mechanisms beyond intellect

  awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

  30and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:

  I found a beggar:

  he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying

  him any attention: everybody went on by:

  I nestled in and found his life:

  35there, love shook his body like a devastation:

  I said

  though I have looked everywhere

  I can find nothing lowly

  in the universe:

  40I whirled through transfigurations up and down,

  transfigurations of size and shape and place:

  at one sudden point came still,

  stood in wonder:

  moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent

  45with being!

  1962 (1963)

  The Golden Mean

  What does

  wisdom say:

  wisdom says

  do not put too much stress

  5on doing; sit some and wait,

  if you can get

  that self-contained:

  but do not sit too much;

  being can wear thin

  10without experience:

  not too much stress on thrift

  at the expense of living;

  immaterial things like

  life must be conserved against

  15materiality: however,

  spending every dime you make

  can exhaust all boundaries,

  destroy resources and

  recovery’s means:

  20not too much stress on knowledge;

  understanding, too, is a

  high faculty

  that should bear pleasurably on facts;

  ordering, aligning,

  25comparing,

  as processes, become diffuse in too

  much massiveness:

  but the acquisition

  of thinking stuff is crucial

  30to knowledge

  and to understanding:

  wisdom says

  do not love exceedingly:

  you must withhold

  35enough to weather loss;

  however, love thoroughly

  and with the body

  so women will respect and fear the little

  man: though dainty

  40they will scoff

  when not profoundly had: not too much

  mind over body or

  body over mind;

  they are united in this life and should

  45blend to dual good or ill:

  and do not stress

  wisdom too much: if you lean neither

  way, the golden

  mean narrows

  50and rather than a way becomes a wire,

  or altogether

  vanishes, a

  hypothetical line from which extremes

  perpendicularly begin:

  55and if you do not

  violate wisdom to some extent,

  committing yourself fully,

  without reserve,

  and foolishly, you will not become one,

  60capable of direction,

  selected to a single aim,

  and you will be notable for nothing:

  nothing in excess is

  excessive nothingness:

  65go: but wisdom says do not go too far.

  1959 (1960)

  Nucleus

  How you buy a factory:

  got wind of one for sale in

  Montreal,

  Hochelaga

  5where Cartier, amicably received,

  gave the squaws and children

  tin bells and tin paternosters

  and the men knives

  and went up to the nearby

  10height and

  called it Mt. Royal

  from which the view was

  panoramic,

  an island 17 × 40

  15miles,

  good trees (good as France)

  and, below, thick maize:

  Montreal,

  got “The Laurentian” out of New York

  20f
irst morning after the strike ended

  and rode up parlor-car (expense account)

  along the solid-white Hudson

  and on up into hilled

  graybirch country, through the Adirondacks

  25and along the high west bank of Lake Champlain

  (on heavy ice

  men in windhuts fishing)

  and read Bottom

  and “gives to airy nothing

  30A local habitation and a name”:

  met the vice president

  in the lobby at 8 next morning, ascended

  (étage de confrères, troisième étage, s’il vous plaît,

  third floor, please)

  35to the 22nd floor

  to “The Panorama”

  for breakfast: sight to see: St. Lawrence over there,

  Windsor Hotel remodeling, where the Queen stayed,

  cathedral, replica (but smaller)

  40of St. Peter’s:

  Montreal,

  and left center city by cab,

  through the French Quarter, out near Westmont,

  long stairs from street to second floor,

  45said it was typical,

  with metal viny rails,

  and on through streets, bilingual

  traffic signs, turn left, left again: there:

  Linden Sreet: 807, a local habitation and a name,

  50four walls, a limited, defined, exact place,

  a nucleus,