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

  to the boundaries

  where relations loosen into chaos

  15or where the nucleus fails to control,

  fragments in odd shapes

  expressing more and more the interstitial sea:

  we are led on

  to peripheries, to the raw blocks of material,

  20where mortar and trowel can convert

  diversity into enlarging unity:

  not the million oriented facts

  but the one or two facts,

  out of place,

  25recalcitrant, the one observed fact

  that tears us into questioning:

  what has not

  joined dies into order to redeem, with

  loss of singleness extends the form,

  30or, unassimilable, leads us on.

  1961

  The Watch

  When the sun went down and the night came on

  coming over the fields and up the driveway

  to the rose arbor and the backporch posts

  I gathered myself together from dispersing dark

  5and went up into the mountains

  and sitting down on the round rock beyond the trees

  kindled my thoughts

  blowing the coals of my day’s bright conscious

  and said

  10all across the plains my voice going silently and down

  among the stumps where the swamp cuts through

  and in between among the villages of hill country

  Now close your eyes

  Sleep

  15Shut out the world from the dark sweet freshening

  of your quiet hearts

  Lie loose in the deep waters

  Do not be afraid to

  give yourselves up to drowning in undefended rest

  20If a dust storm blows up out of the West I will run

  down the mountain and go through all the homes

  and wake you up

  If a new fire appears in the sky I will let you know

  in time

  25so you can know it should it claim you

  I will have all your beings in mind burning like a watchfire

  and when the night has grown thin and weak

  and the full coyotes have given up their calls

  I will move up close to the eternal and

  30saying nine praises

  commend you to it and to the coming sun

  1956 (1957)

  Libation

  I have been throughout the world sleuthing,

  drawing back goatheads

  and from the writhing throats bloodletting,

  watching the harassed religious eyes

  5whirl and freeze.

  Earth drinks

  the blood of fawns: jasmines

  bloom in lions’ eyes.

  Breath and heat I have returned O Earth to your freedoms.

  10Now keep me virile and long at love:

  let submission kiss off

  the asking words from my lips.

  1951 (1964)

  The Wide Land

  Having split up the chaparral

  blasting my sight

  the wind said

  You know I’m

  5the result of

  forces beyond my control

  I don’t hold it against you

  I said

  It’s all right I understand

  10Those pressure bowls and cones

  the wind said

  are giants in their continental gaits

  I know I said I know

  they’re blind giants

  15Actually the wind said I’m

  if anything beneficial

  resolving extremes

  filling up lows with highs

  No I said you don’t have

  20to explain

  It’s just the way things are

  Blind in the wide land I

  turned and risked my feet

  to loose stones and sudden

  25alterations of height

  1957 (1958)

  Thaw

  Winter over, ice-bound

  mind better not

  rush to a spring-meet fast;

  might trip, stiff thoughts,

  5shatter:

  better not warm up too

  close to sun;

  might melt, run, gullies

  caking off the good

  10firm country of the brain.

  Better go slow,

  bend with the gradual movement,

  let sap flow but

  keep an eye on any

  15thermal swell rising at

  glassy mind.

  If it gets loose wind

  will take it

  riddling through the underbrush,

  20but if it stays

  solid brilliant ice

  tulip root

  warm in coming

  will splinter it.

  1958 (1959)

  Whose Timeless Reach

  I Ezra the dying

  portage of these deathless thoughts

  stood on a hill in

  the presence of the mountain

  5and said wisdom is

  too wise for man it

  is for gods and gods have little

  use for it so I do not know what

  to do with it

  10and animals use it only when

  their teeth start to fall and it

  is too late to do anything

  else but be wise and stay

  out of the way

  15The eternal will not lie

  down on any temporal hill

  The frozen mountain rose and broke

  its tireless lecture of repose

  and said death does

  20not take away it

  ends giving halts bounty and

  Bounty I said thinking of ships

  that I might take and helm right

  out through space

  25dwarfing these safe harbors and

  their values

  taking the Way in whose timeless reach

  cool thought unpunishable

  by bones eternally glides

  1955 (1956)

  Ritual for Eating the World

  At a bend in the rocks there hung

  inexplicably a rope

  and musing I said

  When I die don’t bury me

  5under no weeping willer tree

  It’s I thought a hangman’s loop

  provided by my warmer ghoul to

  raise me out of care

  or god’s own private fishing hook

  10for glaring people

  who sit wasted in the sun

  on rocks

  But put me up in a high dry place

  unavailable to the coyote’s face

  15It’s what I said old mountain

  climbers left

  dangling

  The wind rides blade on mesa tops

  Oh when I die don’t bury me

  20under no weeping willer tree

  and there being besides old bush

  and distance nothing but a rope

  I engaged myself with it but

  it broke

  25and all through the heaving night

  making day I faced

  piecemeal the sordid

  reacceptance of my world

  1957 (1958)

  Driving Through

  In the desert midnight I said

  taking out my notebook I

  am astonished

  though widely traveled having

  5seen Empire State and Palestine, Texas

  and San Miguel de Allende

  to mention extremes

  and sharpened my pencil on the sole

  of my shoe

  10The mountains running skidded

  over the icy mirages of the moon

  and fell down tumbling

  laughing for breath

  on the cool dunes

  15The stone mosaics of the flattest

  place
s (parting lake-gifts) grouped

  in colors and

  played games at imagery: a green

  tiger with orange eyes, an Orpheus

  20with moving fingers

  Fontal the shrubs flooded

  everything with cool

  water

  I sat down against a brimming smoketree

  25to watch and morning found the

  desert reserved

  trembling at its hot and rainless task

  Driving through

  you would never suspect

  30the midnight rite or seeing my lonely house

  guess it will someday hold

  laurel and a friend

  1955 (1956)

  March Song

  At a bend in the stream by willows

  I paused to be with the cattails

  their long flat leaves

  and tall stems

  5bleached by wind and winter light

  and winter had kept them

  edged down into the quiet eddy of the bend

  tight with ice

  O willows I said how you return

  10gold to the nakedness of your limbs

  coming again out of that country

  into the longer sun

  and Oh I said turning to the fluffy cattails

  loosened to the approaching winds of spring

  15what a winter you leave in the pale stems

  of your becoming

  1957 (1959)

  Gravelly Run

  I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient

  to see and hear whatever coming and going is,

  losing the self to the victory

  of stones and trees,

  5of bending sandpit lakes, crescent

  round groves of dwarf pine:

  for it is not so much to know the self

  as to know it as it is known

  by galaxy and cedar cone,

  10as if birth had never found it

  and death could never end it:

  the swamp’s slow water comes

  down Gravelly Run fanning the long

  stone-held algal

  15hair and narrowing roils between

  the shoulders of the highway bridge:

  holly grows on the banks in the woods there,

  and the cedars’ gothic-clustered

  spires could make

  20green religion in winter bones:

  so I look and reflect, but the air’s glass

  jail seals each thing in its entity:

  no use to make any philosophies here:

  I see no

  25god in the holly, hear no song from

  the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter

  yellow in the pines: the sunlight has never

  heard of trees: surrendered self among

  unwelcoming forms: stranger,

  30hoist your burdens, get on down the road.

  1958 (1960)

  TAPE FOR THE TURN OF THE YEAR (1965)

  for Josephine Jacobsen and Elliott Coleman

  6 DEC:

  today I

  decided to write

  a long

  thin

  5poem

  employing certain

  classical considerations:

  this

  part is called the pro-

  10logue: it has to do with

  the business of

  getting started:

  first the

  Muse

  15must be acknowledged,

  saluted, and implored:

  I cannot

  write

  without her help

  20but when

  her help comes it’s

  water from spring heights,

  warmth and melting,

  stream

  25inexhaustible:

  I salute her, lady

  of a hundred names—

  Inspiration

  Unconscious

  30Apollo (on her man side)

  Parnassus (as her

  haunt)

  Pierian spring (as

  the nature of her

  35going)

  Hippocrene

  Pegasus:

  most of all she’s a

  woman, maybe

  40a woman in us, who sets

  fire to us, gives us no

  rest

  till her

  will’s done:

  45because I’ve decided, the

  Muse willing,

  to do this foolish

  long

  thin

  50poem, I

  specially beg

  assistance:

  help me!

  a fool who

  55plays with fool things

  so fools and play

  can rise in the regard of

  the people,

  provide serious rest

  60and sweet engagement

  to willing minds:

  and the Muse be manifest:

  I’m attracted to paper,

  visualize

  65kitchen napkins

  scribbled

  with little masterpieces:

  so

  it was natural for

  70me (in the House &

  Garden store one

  night a couple weeks

  ago) to contemplate

  this roll of

  75adding-machine tape, so

  narrow, long,

  unbroken, and to penetrate

  into some

  fool use for it: I

  80thought of the poem

  then,

  but not seriously: now,

  two weeks

  have gone by, and

  85the Muse hasn’t

  rejected it,

  seems caught up in the

  serious novelty:

  I get weak in

  90the knees

  (feel light in the head)

  when I look down

  and see

  how much footage is

  95tightly wound in that

  roll: once started,

  can I ever get

  free

  of the thing, get it in

  100and out of typewriter

  and mind? one

  rolled end, one

  dangling, coiling end?

  will the Muse fill it

  105up immediately and let me

  loose? can my back

  muscles last? my mind,

  can it be

  as long as

  110a tape

  and unwind with it?

  the Muse takes care of

  that: I do what I

  can:

  115may this song be plain as

  day, exact and bright!

  no moonlight to loosen

  shrubs into

  shapes that

  120never were: no dark

  nights to dissolve

  woods into one black

  depthless dimension:

  may this song leave

  125darkness alone, deal

  with what

  light can win into clarity:

  clarity & simplicity!

  no muffled talk, fragments

  130of phrases, linked

  without logical links,

  strung

  together in obscurities

  supposed to reflect

  135density: it’s

  a wall

  to obscure emptiness, the

  talk of a posing man who

  must talk

  140but who has nothing to

  say: let this song

  make

  complex things salient,

  saliences clear, so

  145there can be some

  understanding:

  7 DEC:

  today

  I feel a bit different:

  my prolog sounds phony &

  150posed:

  maybe

  I betrayed

  depth

  by oversimplificat
ion,

  155a smugness,

  unjustified sense of

  security:

  last

  night I

  160read

  about the

  geologic times

  of the Northwest, the

  periodic eruptions into

  165lava plateaus,

  forest grown, stabilized,

  and drowned

  between eruptions:

  in the

  170last

  10,000 years (a bit of

  time) the

  glaciers have been

  melting, some now unfed,

  175disconnected, lying dead

  and dissolving in

  high

  valleys: how strange

  we are here,

  180raw, new, how ephemeral our

  lives and cultures,

  how unrelated

  to the honing out of

  caves and canyons:

  185the lands, floating, rise

  and fall, unnoticed in the

  rapid

  turning over

  of generations:

  190we, rapids in a valley

  that millennially sinks:

  nothing’s simple, but

  should we add

  verbal complexity?

  195is there a darkness

  dark words should

  imitate?

  I mean to stay on the

  crusty

  200hard-clear surface: tho

  congealed

  it reflects the deep,

  the fluid, hot motions

  and intermotions where,

  205after all, we

  do not live:

  10,000 yrs

  Troy