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

  solidification from possibility:

  how you buy a factory:

  determine the lines of

  55force

  leading in and out, origins, destinations of lines;

  determine how

  from the nexus of crossed and bundled lines

  the profit is

  60obtained, the

  forces realized, the cheap made dear,

  and whether the incoming or outgoing forces are stronger

  and exactly why,

  and what is to be done:

  65raw material inventory is

  in winter

  high: river frozen, must make half-year provisions,

  squirrel-like, last till thaw, is

  a warehousing problem: comes from England,

  70Germany (West):

  important to keep a ready

  stock of finished goods—customers won’t wait, will

  order from parent companies in England, Germany:

  property taxes: things are

  75changing, you may get a rail siding here soon:

  profit and loss sheet, cash flow, receivables:

  large lot, vacancy providing for the future:

  good machineshop and

  here are the production lines:

  80how many heads on those machines: pcs per hr:

  wages, skilled

  unskilled: cut-off machines, annealing ovens, formers:

  “I’ll say! 15 below this morning.”

  order backlog: “I would say we have

  85an edge,

  growth possibility: 50 good customers, pharm-

  aceutical houses: you have to understand the background.”

  Perspective.

  “Eight years ago . . . finally, I had to go to

  90Ottawa . . . left good man here, Oh, yes, he’s done

  fine . . . Swiss, later in Johannesburg;

  you understand, management

  wouldn’t consider

  selling him out, too much of himself”: un-

  95favorable points: competition, international market,

  low tariffs,

  unprotected, only advantage personalized service

  to local

  accounts, could

  100buy elsewhere,

  large firms in States have bigger machines, faster,

  more production per hour

  (more overhead, too)

  “being small’s our advantage . . . can adapt, work with

  105short runs of specialties—customers want

  their own designs, premium,

  made-to-order prices . . .”

  Montreal,

  “sure to see McGill U., ice sculpture front of

  110each dorm, emblem”

  cornless lawns,

  Cartier going through the motions of worship,

  Indians looking up at sky, too,

  can’t see what:

  115“We’ll get that information to you”

  further study

  and in the deep cold night boarding train, bedroom,

  Yassuh,

  and heat connections broken, cold, next morning

  120going uptrain for toast and coffee,

  that’s where East River turns—Manhattan:

  lines of force, winding, unwinding,

  nexus coiling in the mind:

  balance, judge: act.

  1961

  CORSONS INLET (1965)

  for Family, for Friends

  Visit

  It is not far to my place:

  you can come smallboat,

  pausing under shade in the eddies

  or going ashore

  5to rest, regard the leaves

  or talk with birds and

  shore weeds: hire a full grown man not

  late in years to oar you

  and choose a canoe-like thin ship:

  10(a dumb man is better and no

  costlier; he will attract

  the reflections and silences under leaves:)

  travel light: a single book, some twine:

  the river is muscled at rapids with trout

  15and a birch limb

  will make a suitable spit: if you

  leave in the forenoon, you will arrive

  with plenty of light

  the afternoon of the third day: I will

  20come down to the landing

  (tell your man to look for it,

  the dumb have clear sight and are free of

  visions) to greet you with some made

  wine and a special verse:

  25or you can come by shore:

  choose the right: there the rocks

  cascade less frequently, the grade more gradual:

  treat yourself gently: the ascent thins both

  mind and blood and you must

  30keep still a dense reserve

  of silence we can poise against

  conversation: there is little news:

  I found last month a root with shape and

  have heard a new sound among

  35the insects: come.

  1961 (1962)

  Moment

  He turned and

  stood

  in the moment’s

  height,

  5exhilaration

  sucking him up,

  shuddering and

  lifting

  him

  10jaw and bone

  and he said

  what

  destruction am I

  blessed by?

  1963 (1963)

  Winter Scene

  There is now not a single

  leaf on the cherry tree:

  except when the jay

  plummets in, lights, and,

  5in pure clarity, squalls:

  then every branch

  quivers and

  breaks out in blue leaves.

  1963 (1964)

  Corsons Inlet

  I went for a walk over the dunes again this morning

  to the sea,

  then turned right along

  the surf

  5rounded a naked headland

  and returned

  along the inlet shore:

  it was muggy sunny, the wind from the sea steady and high,

  crisp in the running sand,

  10some breakthroughs of sun

  but after a bit

  continuous overcast:

  the walk liberating, I was released from forms,

  from the perpendiculars,

  15straight lines, blocks, boxes, binds

  of thought

  into the hues, shadings, rises, flowing bends and blends

  of sight:

  I allow myself eddies of meaning:

  20yield to a direction of significance

  running

  like a stream through the geography of my work:

  you can find

  in my sayings

  25swerves of action

  like the inlet’s cutting edge:

  there are dunes of motion,

  organizations of grass, white sandy paths of remembrance

  in the overall wandering of mirroring mind:

  30but Overall is beyond me: is the sum of these events

  I cannot draw, the ledger I cannot keep, the accounting

  beyond the account:

  in nature there are few sharp lines: there are areas of

  primrose

  35more or less dispersed;

  disorderly orders of bayberry; between the rows

  of dunes,

  irregular swamps of reeds,

  though not reeds alone, but grass, bayberry, yarrow, all . . .

  40predominantly reeds:

  I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries,

  shutting out and shutting in, separating inside

  from outside: I have

  drawn no lines:

  45as

  manifold events of sand

  change the dune’s shape that will
not be the same shape

  tomorrow,

  so I am willing to go along, to accept

  50the becoming

  thought, to stake off no beginnings or ends, establish

  no walls:

  by transitions the land falls from grassy dunes to creek

  to undercreek: but there are no lines, though

  55change in that transition is clear

  as any sharpness: but “sharpness” spread out,

  allowed to occur over a wider range

  than mental lines can keep:

  the moon was full last night: today, low tide was low:

  60black shoals of mussels exposed to the risk

  of air

  and, earlier, of sun,

  waved in and out with the waterline, waterline inexact,

  caught always in the event of change:

  65a young mottled gull stood free on the shoals

  and ate

  to vomiting: another gull, squawking possession, cracked a crab,

  picked out the entrails, swallowed the soft-shelled legs, a ruddy

  turnstone running in to snatch leftover bits:

  70risk is full: every living thing in

  siege: the demand is life, to keep life: the small

  white blacklegged egret, how beautiful, quietly stalks and spears

  the shallows, darts to shore

  to stab—what? I couldn’t

  75see against the black mudflats—a frightened

  fiddler crab?

  the news to my left over the dunes and

  reeds and bayberry clumps was

  fall: thousands of tree swallows

  80gathering for flight:

  an order held

  in constant change: a congregation

  rich with entropy: nevertheless, separable, noticeable

  as one event,

  85not chaos: preparations for

  flight from winter,

  cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, wings rifling the green clumps,

  beaks

  at the bayberries:

  90a perception full of wind, flight, curve,

  sound:

  the possibility of rule as the sum of rulelessness:

  the “field” of action

  with moving, incalculable center:

  95in the smaller view, order tight with shape:

  blue tiny flowers on a leafless weed: carapace of crab:

  snail shell:

  pulsations of order

  in the bellies of minnows: orders swallowed,

  100broken down, transferred through membranes

  to strengthen larger orders: but in the large view, no

  lines or changeless shapes: the working in and out, together

  and against, of millions of events: this,

  so that I make

  105no form of

  formlessness:

  orders as summaries, as outcomes of actions override

  or in some way result, not predictably (seeing me gain

  the top of a dune,

  110the swallows

  could take flight—some other fields of bayberry

  could enter fall

  berryless) and there is serenity:

  no arranged terror: no forcing of image, plan,

  115or thought:

  no propaganda, no humbling of reality to precept:

  terror pervades but is not arranged, all possibilities

  of escape open: no route shut, except in

  the sudden loss of all routes:

  120I see narrow orders, limited tightness, but will

  not run to that easy victory:

  still around the looser, wider forces work:

  I will try

  to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening

  125scope, but enjoying the freedom that

  Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision,

  that I have perceived nothing completely,

  that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.

  1962 (1963)

  Dunes

  Taking root in windy sand

  is not an easy

  way

  to go about

  5finding a place to stay.

  A ditchbank or wood’s-edge

  has firmer ground.

  In a loose world though

  something can be started—

  10a root touch water,

  a tip break sand—

  Mounds from that can rise

  on held mounds,

  a gesture of building, keeping,

  15a trapping

  into shape.

  Firm ground is not available ground.

  1963 (1963)

  Street Song

  Like an

  eddying willow leaf

  I stand

  on the street

  5and turn:

  people,

  both ways coming

  and going

  around me, swirl:

  10probably I

  am no stiller—

  detached; but

  gold is

  coming

  15into my veins.

  1963 (1964)

  Lines

  Lines flying in, out: logarithmic

  curves coiling

  toward an infinitely inward center: lines

  weaving in, threads lost in clustral scrawl,

  5weaving out into loose ends,

  wandering beyond the border of gray background,

  going out of vision,

  not returning;

  or, returning, breaking across the boundary

  10as new lines, discontinuous,

  come into sight:

  fiddleheads of ferns, croziers of violins,

  convoluted spherical masses, breaking through

  ditchbanks where briar

  15stem-dull will

  leave and bloom:

  haunch line, sickle-like, turning down, bulging, nuzzling

  under, closing into

  the hidden, sweet, dark meeting of lips:

  20the spiraling out

  or in

  of galaxies:

  the free-running wavy line, swirling

  configuration, halting into a knot

  25of curve and density: the broken,

  irreparable filament: tree-winding vines, branching,

  falling off or back, free,

  the adventitious preparation for possibility, from

  branch to branch, ash to gum:

  30the breaker

  hurling into reach for shape, crashing

  out of order, the inner hollow sizzling flat:

  the longnecked, uteral gourd, bass line

  continuous in curve,

  35melodic line filling and thinning:

  concentrations,

  whirling masses,

  thin leaders, disordered ends and risks:

  explosions of clusters, expansions from the

  40full radial sphere; return’s longest chance:

  lines exploring, intersecting, paralleling, twisting,

  noding: deranging, clustering.

  1960 (1963)

  Coon Song

  I got one good look

  in the raccoon’s eyes

  when he fell from the tree

  came to his feet

  5and perfectly still

  seized the baying hounds

  in his dull fierce stare,

  in that recognition all

  decision lost,

  10choice irrelevant, before the

  battle fell

  and the unwinding

  of his little knot of time began:

  Dostoevsky would think

  15it important if the coon

  could choose to

  be back up the tree:

  or if he could choose to be

  wagging by a swamp pond,

  20dabbling at scuttling

  crawdads: the coon may have

  dreamed in fact of curling
>
  into the holed-out gall

  of a fallen oak some squirrel

  25had once brought

  high into the air

  clean leaves to: but

  reality can go to hell

  is what the coon’s eyes said to me:

  30and said how simple

  the solution to my

  problem is: it needs only

  not to be: I thought the raccoon

  felt no anger,

  35saw none; cared nothing for cowardice,

  bravery; was in fact

  bored at

  knowing what would ensue:

  the unwinding, the whirling growls,

  40exposed tenders,

  the wet teeth—a problem to be

  solved, the taut-coiled vigor

  of the hunt

  ready to snap loose:

  45you want to know what happened,

  you want to hear me describe it,

  to placate the hound’s-mouth

  slobbering in your own heart:

  I will not tell you: actually the coon

  50possessing secret knowledge

  pawed dust on the dogs

  and they disappeared, yapping into

  nothingness, and the coon went

  down to the pond

  55and washed his face and hands and beheld

  the world: maybe he didn’t:

  I am no slave that I

  should entertain you, say what you want

  to hear, let you wallow in

  60your silt: one two three four five:

  one two three four five six seven eight nine ten:

  (all this time I’ve been