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

descent of the

  god is

  awkward,

  narrowing and

  50difficult; first

  he is

  loose in the

  air,

  then captured,

  55held, by

  holy fire: the

  circle of columns

  binds

  him and from

  60the columns

  the priestess

  gathers him,

  seized

  by her struggling

  65mouth into

  a speech of

  forms: it is

  speech

  few can read,

  70the god

  violent to

  over-reach the

  definite:

  why should

  75he, who is

  all, commit

  himself to the

  particular?

  say himself

  80into less

  than all? pressed

  too far, he

  leaves

  wounds that are

  85invisible: it

  is only as

  she becomes

  him

  that the priestess

  90cannot be hurt

  or can be hurt:

  should she

  break

  her human hold

  95and go too far

  with him,

  who could bring

  her

  back, her eyes

  100lost to the

  visible? step

  by step into the

  actual,

  truth descending

  105breaks,

  reaches us as

  fragmentation

  hardened

  into words”:

  110but, I said, isn’t

  it convenient

  the priestess is

  general

  and inexact, merely

  115turning and wailing?

  if the god fails

  me, whom shall I

  blame?

  her? you who may

  120have read her wrong?

  and if all goes

  well, whom shall I

  thank?

  the god

  125with honor,

  you with the

  actual coin?

  “Night

  falls,” the reader said,

  130“the priestess lies

  god-torn, limp: the

  freed god

  flies

  again blameless as

  135air: go

  to your fate:

  if you succeed, praise the

  god:

  if you fail,

  140discover your flaw.”

  1960 (1964)

  Spindle

  Song is a violence

  of icicles and

  windy trees:

  rising it catches up

  5indifferent

  cellophane, loose

  leaves, all mobiles

  into an organized whirl

  relating scrap

  10to scrap in a round

  fury: violence

  brocades

  the rocks with hard silver

  of sea water and

  15makes the tree

  show the power of its

  holding on: a

  violence to make

  that can destroy.

  1963 (1964)

  The Yucca Moth

  The yucca clump

  is blooming,

  tall sturdy spears

  spangling into bells of light,

  5green

  in the white blooms

  faint as

  a memory of mint:

  I raid

  10a bloom,

  spread the hung petals out,

  and, surprised he is not

  a bloom-part, find

  a moth inside, the exact color,

  15the bloom his daylight port or cove:

  though time comes

  and goes and troubles

  are unlessened,

  the yucca is lifting temples

  20of bloom: from the night

  of our dark flights, can

  we go in to heal, live

  out in white-green shade

  the radiant, white, hanging day?

  1962 (1964)

  Anxiety

  The sparrowhawk

  flies hard to

  stand in the

  air: something

  5about direction

  lets us loose

  into ease

  and slow grace.

  1963 (1964)

  Four Motions for the Pea Vines

  1.

  the rhythm is

  diffusion and concentration:

  in and out:

  expansion and

  5contraction: the unfolding,

  furling:

  the forces

  that propel the rhythm,

  the lines of winding-up,

  10loosening, depositing,

  dissolving:

  the vehicles!

  light, the vehicle of itself, light

  surrounding

  15we are made and fed by:

  water, the solvent, vehicle

  of molecules and grains,

  the dissolver and depositor,

  the maker of films

  20and residues,

  the all-absorbing vessel uncontained!

  the rhythm is

  out and

  in,

  25diffusion and concentration:

  the dry pea from the

  ground

  expands to vines and leaves,

  harvests sun and water

  30into

  baby-white new peas:

  the forms that exist

  in this rhythm! the whirling

  forms!

  35grief and glory of

  this rhythm:

  the rhythm is

  2.

  for the expansions (and concentrations) here

  is the five-acre

  40Todd Field:

  seeding, too, is gathering,

  preparation to collect

  mineral, rain, and light, and

  between the corn-rows,

  45the broadcast field peas

  fall into soft, laying-by soil:

  dry beads of concentration

  covered by the moist

  general ground:

  50and the general moisture, the rain’s

  held shadow, softens, breaks

  down, swells

  and frees

  the hard incipience that

  55generalizes outward toward extension;

  the root reaching with gravity,

  the stalk opposing

  crazing through the black land upward to the light

  3.

  fat and sassy

  60the raucous crows

  along the wood’s edge

  trouble the tops of

  yellowing pines

  with points of dipping black;

  65cluster into groups

  from summer,

  the younglings in their wings

  poised,

  careful,

  70precise,

  the dazed awkwardness of heavy nest birds

  hardened lean into grace;

  assemble along the edge of the field and

  begin winter talk,

  75remembrances of summer and separations,

  agree

  or disagree

  on a roost,

  the old birds more often silent,

  80calmer and more tolerant in their memory,

  wiser of dangers

  experienced or conceived,

  less inclined to play,

  irritable,

  85but at times

  exultant in pitched flight,

  as if catching for a moment

  youth’s inexperienced gladness, or as if

  feelin
g

  90over time and danger

  a triumph greater than innocent joy:

  to turn aside and live with them

  would not seem

  much different—

  95each of us going into winter with gains and losses,

  dry, light peas of concentration nearby

  (for a winter’s gleaning)

  to expand warmth through us

  4.

  slow as the pale low-arcing sun, the women move

  100down windy rows of the autumn field:

  the peavines are dead:

  cornstalks and peapods rattle in the dry bleach

  of cold:

  the women glean remnant peas

  105(too old to snap or shell) that

  got past being green; shatter from skeletal vines

  handfuls of peapods, tan, light:

  bent the slow women drag towsacks huge

  with peas, bulk but little

  110weight: a boy carries a sack on his

  shoulders to the end of the rows:

  he stoops: the sack goes over his head

  to the ground: he flails it with a tobacco stick,

  opens the sack, removes the husks, and

  115from sack to tub winnows

  dry hard crackling peas: rhythms reaching through

  seasons, motions weaving in and out!

  1962 (1964)

  Hymn II

  So when the year had come full round

  I rose

  and went out to the naked mountain

  to see

  5the single peachflower on the sprout

  blooming through a side of ribs

  possibly a colt’s

  and I endured each petal separately

  and moved in orisons with the sepals

  10I lay

  said the sprouting stump

  in the path of Liberty

  Tyranny though I said is very terrible

  and sat down leeward of the blossom

  15to be blessed

  and was startled by

  a lost circling bee

  The large sun setting red I went

  down to the stream

  20and wading in

  let your cold water run over my feet

  1954 (1958)

  Hymn III

  In the hour of extreme

  importance

  when clots thicken

  in outlying limbs and

  5warmth retreats

  to mourn

  the thinning garrison of pulse

  keep my tongue loose

  to sing possible

  10changes

  that might redeem

  might in iron phrases

  clang the skies

  bells and my jangling eyes

  15ringing you in

  to claim me

  shriven celebrant

  your love’s new-reasoned singer

  home

  20dead on arrival

  (1958)

  Open

  Exuberance: joy to the last

  pained loss

  and hunger of air:

  life open, not decided on,

  5though decided in death:

  the mind cannot be

  rid

  while it works

  of remembered genitals

  10beautiful, dank, pliant,

  of canyons, brush hills, pastures, streets,

  unities and divisions,

  meetings,

  exact remembrance of liquid buttocks,

  15navel, ellipse of hand,

  magnified territories of going down

  and rising,

  the thin tracing saliva line,

  joy’s configurations:

  20serendipity: the unexpected,

  the

  possible, the unembodied,

  unevented:

  the sun will burst: death

  25is certain: the future limited

  nevertheless is

  limitless: the white knotted

  groin,

  the finger describing

  30entrances!

  the dark, warm with glowing awareness, the

  hot dis-

  missals of desire

  until the last last tear of pain:

  35until the end nothing ends, lust

  forward, rushing;

  pillars of ice wet-bright in melt,

  warm

  with always-yielding joy: yes

  40yes

  yes, the loose mouths hiss in the mornings of death.

  1960 (1963)

  Epiphany

  Like a single drop of rain,

  the wasp strikes

  the windowpane; buzzes rapidly

  away, disguising

  5error in urgent business:

  such is the

  invisible, hard as glass,

  unrenderable by the senses,

  not known until stricken by:

  10some talk that

  there is safety in the visible,

  the definite, the heard and felt,

  pre-stressing the rational and

  calling out with

  15joy, like people far from death:

  how puzzled they will be when

  going headlong secure in “things”

  they strike the

  intangible and break, lost,

  20unaccustomed to transparency, to

  being without body, energy

  without image:

  how they will be dealt

  hard realizations, opaque as death.

  1959 (1960)

  Prodigal

  After the shifts and dis-

  continuities, after the congregations of orders,

  black masses floating through

  mind’s boreal clarity, icebergs in fog,

  5flotillas of wintering ducks weathering the night,

  chains of orders, multifilamentous chains

  knobbed with possibility, disoriented

  chains, winding back on themselves, unwinding,

  intervolving, spinning, breaking off

  10(nomads clustering at dusk into tents of sleep,

  disorganizing, widening out again with morning)

  after the mental

  blaze and gleam,

  the mind in both motions building and tearing down,

  15running to link effective chains,

  establish molecules of meaning,

  frameworks, to

  perfect modes of structuring

  (so days can bend to trellising

  20and pruned take shape,

  bloom into necessary event)

  after these motions, these vectors,

  orders moving in and out of orders, collisions

  of orders, dispersions, the grasp weakens,

  25the mind whirls, short of the unifying

  reach, short of the heat

  to carry that forging:

  after the visions of these losses, the spent

  seer, delivered to wastage, risen

  30into ribs, consigns knowledge to

  approximation, order to the vehicle

  of change, and fumbles blind in blunt innocence

  toward divine, terrible love.

  1959 (1964)

  Motion

  The word is

  not the thing:

  is

  a construction of,

  5a tag for,

  the thing: the

  word in

  no way

  resembles

  10the thing, except

  as sound

  resembles,

  as in whirr,

  sound:

  15the relation

  between what this

  as words

  is

  and what is

  20is tenuous: we

  agree upon

  this as the net to

  cast on what

  is: the finger

  25to

  point with: the

/>   method of

  distinguishing,

  defining, limiting:

  30poems

  are fingers, methods,

  nets,

  not what is or

  was:

  35but the music

  in poems

  is different,

  points to nothing,

  traps no

  40realities, takes

  no game, but

  by the motion of

  its motion

  resembles

  45what, moving, is—

  the wind

  underleaf white against

  the tree.

  1962 (1964)

  The Misfit

  The unassimilable fact leads us on:

  round the edges

  where broken shapes make poor masonry

  the synthesis

  5fails (and succeeds) into limitation

  or extending itself too far

  becomes a different synthesis:

  law applies

  consistently to the molecule,

  10not to the ocean, unoriented, unprocessed,

  it floats in, that floats in it:

  we are led on