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

  counting spaces

  while you were thinking of something else)

  65mess in your own sloppy silt:

  the hounds disappeared

  yelping (the way you would at extinction)

  into—the order

  breaks up here—immortality:

  70I know that’s where you think the brave

  little victims should go:

  I do not care what

  you think: I do not care what you think:

  I do not care what you

  75think: one two three four five

  six seven eight nine ten: here we go

  round the here-we-go-round, the

  here-we-go-round, the here-we-

  go-round: coon will end in disorder at the

  80teeth of hounds: the situation

  will get him:

  spheres roll, cubes stay put: now there

  one two three four five

  are two philosophies:

  85here we go round the mouth-wet of hounds:

  what I choose

  is youse:

  baby

  1959 (1963)

  Portrait

  Dry-leaf life

  curls up on

  lobe toes

  and like a lost

  5or haunted crab

  skitters

  across the street,

  fretting at

  the wind,

  10or curled forward

  tumbles down or

  even up a

  rise, gay and

  light as a

  15spring catkin,

  or boatlike strikes

  a stream or, wet,

  flattens

  out stream-bottom

  20in windless

  black: come,

  wind, away from

  water and let

  song spring &

  25leap with this

  paper-life’s

  lively show.

  1963 (1964)

  Jungle Knot

  One morning Beebe

  found on a bank of the Amazon

  an owl and snake

  dead in a coiled embrace:

  5the vine prints its coil too deep into the tree

  and leaved fire shoots greens of tender flame

  rising among the branches,

  drawing behind a hardening, wooden clasp:

  the tree does not

  10generally escape

  though it may live thralled for years,

  succumbing finally rather than at once,

  in the vine’s victory

  the casting of its eventual death,

  15though it may live years

  on the skeletal trunk,

  termites rising, the rain softening,

  a limb in storm

  falling, the vine air-free at last, structureless as death:

  20the owl,

  Beebe says, underestimated

  the anaconda’s size: hunger had deformed

  sight or caution, or

  anaconda, come out in moonlight on the river bank,

  25had left half his length in shade: (you

  sometimes tackle

  more than just what the light shows):

  the owl struck talons

  back of the anaconda’s head

  30but weight grounded him in surprise: the anaconda

  coiled, embracing heaving wings

  and cry, and the talons, squeezed in, sank

  killing snake and owl in tightened pain:

  errors of vision, errors of self-defense!

  35errors of wisdom, errors of desire!

  the vulture dives, unlocks four eyes.

  1961 (1963)

  Dark Song

  Sorrow how high it is

  that no wall holds it

  back: deep

  it is that no dam undermines

  5it: wide that it

  comes on as up a strand

  multiple and relentless:

  the young that are

  beautiful must die; the

  10old, departing,

  can confer

  nothing.

  1963 (1964)

  Resort

  Beautiful nature,

  say

  the neuter lovers

  escaping

  5man/woman nature,

  man

  fierce competitive,

  woman

  taunting

  10treacherous:

  regenerative nature,

  they say

  fingering the cool

  red-dotted lichen

  15on an old

  water-holding

  stump:

  sweet neutrality,

  a calm love where

  20man and woman

  are fang & fury.

  (1964)

  Upright

  He said

  I am mud

  in a universe of stone and fire,

  neither hard

  5enough to last

  nor expressed

  in one

  of those imperishable fires.

  Be something

  10the grassblade said

  rising whitegreen

  from common swamp.

  I am he

  said

  15nothing &

  feel better that

  way.

  The grassblade

  said

  20be like us

  grass stone

  and fire and

  pass.

  Mud is

  25nothing

  and eternal.

  1963 (1963)

  Catalyst

  Honor the maggot,

  supreme catalyst:

  he spurs the rate of change:

  (all scavengers are honorable: I love them

  5all,

  will scribble hard as I can for them)

  he accelerates change

  in the changeless continuum;

  where the body falls completed, he sets to work:

  10where the spirit attains

  indifference

  he makes his residence:

  in the egg on wing from mound

  to mound he travels,

  15feeds, finds his wings,

  after the wet-sweet of decay,

  after the ant-sucked earth has drunk

  the honey-fluids,

  after

  20the veins

  lie dried to streaks of tendon

  inside the meat-free, illuminated skull,

  lofts, saws the air, copulates in a hung

  rapture

  25of riding, holds the sweet-clear

  connection

  through dual flights, male and female,

  soil’s victory:

  (dead cell dross transfigured

  30into gloss,

  iridescence of compound eyes,

  duck-neck purple of hairy abdomen)

  O worm supreme,

  transformer of bloated, breaking flesh

  35into colorless netted wings,

  into the wills of sex and song, leaving

  ash on odorless ground, the scent

  of pinestraw

  rising dominant from the striking sun!

  1960 (1963)

  Loss

  When the sun

  falls behind the sumac

  thicket the

  wild

  5yellow daisies

  in diffuse evening shade

  lose their

  rigorous attention

  and

  10half-wild with loss

  turn

  any way the wind does

  and lift their

  petals up

  15to float

  off their stems

  and go

  1964 (1964)

  World

  Breakers at high tide shoot

  spray over the jetty boulders

  that collects in shallow chips, depressions,

  evening the surface to run-off lev
el:

  5of these possible worlds of held water,

  most can’t outlast the interim tideless

  drought, so are clear, sterile, encased with

  salt: one in particular, though, a hole,

  providing depth with little surface,

  10keeps water through the hottest day:

  a slime of green algae extends into that

  tiny sea, and animals tiny enough to be in a

  world there breed and dart and breathe and

  die: so we are here in this plant-created oxygen,

  15drinking this sweet rain, consuming this green.

  1963 (1964)

  Butterflyweed

  The butterfly that

  named the weed

  drank there, Monarch,

  scrolled, medallioned—

  5his wings lifted close

  in pale underwing salute

  occasionally would

  with tense evenness

  open down

  10hinged coffers

  lawned against the sun:

  anchored in

  dream, I could hardly

  fall when earth

  15dropped and looped away.

  1963 (1964)

  Configurations

  1

  when November stripped

  the shrub,

  what stood

  out

  5in revealed space was

  a nest

  hung

  in essential limbs

  2

  how harmless truth

  10is

  in cold weather

  to an empty nest

  3

  dry

  leaves

  15in

  the

  bowl,

  like wings

  4

  summer turned light

  20into darkness

  and inside the shadeful

  shrub

  the secret

  worked

  25itself into life:

  icicles and waterpanes:

  recognitions:

  at the bottom, knowledges

  and desertions

  5

  30speech comes out,

  a bleached form,

  nestlike:

  after the events of silence

  the flying away

  35of silence

  into speech—

  6

  the nest is held

  off-earth

  by sticks;

  40so, intelligence

  stays

  out of the ground

  erect on a

  brittle walk of bones:

  45otherwise

  the sea,

  empty of separations

  7

  leaves

  like wings

  50in the Nov

  ember nest:

  wonder where the birds are now that were here:

  wonder if the hawks missed them:

  wonder if

  55dry wings

  lie abandoned,

  bodiless

  this

  November:

  60leaves—out of so many

  a nestful missed the ground

  8

  I am a bush

  I am a nest

  I am a bird

  65I am a wind

  I am a negg

  I is a bush, nest, bird, wind, negg

  I is a leaf

  if I fall what falls:

  70the leaves fell and the birds flew away and winter came and

  9

  when

  I

  ambringing

  singingthosehome

  75,two again

  summerbirds

  comes

  back

  10

  so what if

  80lots of

  unfathomable stuff

  remains,

  inconceivable distances,

  closed and open infinities:

  85so what if

  all that, if

  thunderstorms spill the eggs,

  loosen the nest, strew it across

  galaxies of grass and weeds:

  90who cares what remains when

  only the interior

  immaterial

  configuration—

  shape—

  95mattered, matters, immaterial, unremaining

  11

  there is some relationship between

  proximity

  to the earth and permanence:

  a shrub puts itself into and out of

  100the earth at once,

  earth and air united by a stem’s

  polar meshes of roots and branches:

  earth

  shrub

  105nest

  leaf

  bird

  the bird is somewhere south, unoriented

  to these roots:

  110the leaves

  though they may not have wandered so far

  are random:

  earth

  shrub

  115nest

  goodbye, nest, if wind lifts you loose

  goodbye, shrub, if ice breaks you down

  goodbye,

  goodbye

  12

  120the shrub is nothing

  except part of my song:

  the bird I never saw is part of my song and

  nothing else:

  (the leaves are a great many little notes I lost

  125when I was trying to make the song

  that became my silence)

  13

  the cockbird longs for the henbird

  which longs for the nest

  which longs for the shrub which

  130longs for the earth

  which longs for the sun which longs for

  14

  inside there the woodmeat is saying

  please, please

  let me put on my leaves

  135let me let the sap go

  but the zero bark is saying

  hush, hush

  the time is not right

  it’s not the right time

  140the woodmeat is always right

  but bark is knowing

  1963

  Glass

  The song

  sparrow puts all his

  saying

  into one

  5repeated song:

  what

  variations, subtleties

  he manages,

  to encompass denser

  10meanings, I’m

  too coarse

  to catch: it’s

  one song, an over-reach

  from which

  15all possibilities,

  like filaments,

  depend:

  killing,

  nesting, dying,

  20sun or cloud,

  figure up

  and become

  song—simple, hard:

  removed.

  1963 (1964)

  Morning Glory

  Dew was

  heavy

  last night:

  sun-up broke

  5beads

  into running

  water: under

  over

  and

  10against,

  the mockingbird

  fluffing

  amorously

  bathes

  15in leaves

  1963

  The Strait

  At the oracle

  I found the

  god

  though active

  5recalcitrant

  unliteral as air:

  the priestess

  writhed

  and moaned

  10caught

  in the anguish

  of some

  perishable

  event:

  15birds flew by:

  the urns

  hummed: the

  columns

  glazed with

  20sun; on the

  inside li
t wet with

  fire: another, not

  capable

  of the inner

  25speech,

  read the priestess

  and said,

  “The

  god wants honor,

  30desires in you

  honor’s attitude:

  honor him and

  your

  venture will

  35go well”:

  cannot, I said,

  the god be

  more

  specific? will

  40I honor

  him? come again

  safe to this

  grove?

  the reader said,

  45“The