The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 1 Page 6

  the armies quite unwound

  the intentions of the fire

  and snuffed the black reeds smoking out

  but like destroyed mountains

  20left deposits

  that will insure

  deep mulch for next year’s shoots

  the greenest hope

  autumn ever

  25left this patch of reeds

  The Grass Miracles

  The grass miracles have kept me down all autumn

  purpose turning on me like an inward division

  The grasses heading barbed tufts

  airy panicles and purple spikes

  5have kept me stalled in the deadends

  of branching dreams

  It is as though I had started up the trunk

  and then dispersed like ant trails

  along the branches

  10and out on the twigs

  and paused dipping with a golden thought

  at the points of the leaves

  A black stump hidden

  in grass and old melon vines

  15has reined my hurry

  and I have gone up separately

  jiggling like a bubble flock

  in globes of time

  I have not been industrious this autumn

  20It has seemed necessary

  to accomplish everything with a pause

  bending to part the grass

  to what round fruit

  becoming entangled in clusters

  25tying all the future up

  in variations on present miracles

  I Came in a Dark Woods Upon

  I came in a dark woods upon

  an ineffaceable difference

  and oops embracing it

  felt it up and down mindfully

  5in the dark

  prying open the knees to my ideas

  It was slim and hard

  with a sharp point

  and stood up

  10its shaft shot deep as a pile

  Who will extract I said desiring

  a public value this erect

  difference from the ground

  and the dryads

  15shifting in the limbs

  dipped leaves

  blotting the angels’ roofeyes out

  Taking the neck below the barbs

  I eased the wet shaft up into my hands

  20Everything retired

  The dryads took body in the oakhearts

  The angels shuttered their wintry peepholes

  and flew off throneward across the fields

  and the trees arms-up leaned as in wind away

  25and casting the difference

  I splintered

  the whole environment

  and somewhat dazed with grief ran

  catching it up hot in my hands

  30and hurled it far into the seas

  a brother to Excalibur

  A Treeful of Cleavage Flared Branching

  A treeful of cleavage flared branching

  through my flesh and cagey

  I sat down mid-desert

  and heaping hugged up between my knees

  5an altarcone from the sand

  and addressed it with water dreams

  The wind

  chantless of rain in the open place

  spun a sifting hum

  10in slow circles round my sphere of grief

  and the sun

  inched countless arms

  under the periphery of my disc of sight

  eager for the golden thing

  15There must be time I said

  to dream real these dreams

  and the sun

  startled by the sound of time

  said Oh

  20and whirling in his arms

  ran off across the sky

  Heaping the sand

  sharpening the cone of my god I said

  I have oracles to seek

  25Drop leaf shade

  the wet cuticle of the leaf tipped in shade

  yielded belief

  to the fixed will and there

  where the wind like wisdom

  30sweeps clean the lust prints of the sun

  lie my bones entombed

  with the dull mound of my god

  in bliss

  [Behind the I]

  Behind the I

  I is

  an I

  elated

  5leaves

  into

  separables

  Falling too through scopes of

  variables

  10I

  in the

  I-beam is some

  for the moment accidental mote

  Behind the I

  15I discloses

  flows

  winds and seas

  of particles

  while he conceived outside

  20is whole

  beyond realities

  I

  never wants to lose

  One Composing

  One composing seminal works sat oblivious

  by a brothel

  and gave leaflets to the functions of the wind

  saying

  5Time is a liquid orb

  where we swim loose

  timeless in a total time

  pursuing among the nuclear sediment

  the sweet pale flakes of old events

  10Stopping I watched the leaflets rock upward

  from the windy alley

  and brought him a mug of stout

  The contemporary he said

  turning into the brothel

  15is an orb’s shell

  of light

  within the liquid orb

  and fertility came into him like a virtuoso

  and mounting pubic realms

  20he rode galloping through the night

  sweetsap and rain playing marbles

  on the wind’s speed of his outstretched shirt

  One

  weeping beads of ice

  25down the cold deserts of his brain

  cried from the street O Jezebel

  and the seminal one rose wiping saying

  In exhaustion’s death are dregs of wanted sleep

  In the Wind My Rescue Is

  In the wind my rescue is

  in whorls of it

  like winged tufts of dreams

  bearing

  5through the forms of nothingness

  the gyres and hurricane eyes

  the seed safety

  of multiple origins

  I set it my task

  10to gather the stones of earth

  into one place

  the water modeled sand molded stones

  from

  the water images

  15of riverbeds in drought

  from the boundaries of the mind

  from

  sloping farms

  and altitudes of ice and

  20to mount upon the highest stone

  a cardinal

  chilled in the attitude of song

  But the wind has sown loose dreams

  in my eyes

  25and telling unknown tongues

  drawn me out beyond the land’s end

  and rising in long

  parabolas of bliss

  borne me safety

  30from all those ungathered stones

  1954

  [I should have stayed longer idle]

  I should have stayed longer idle

  and done reverence

  to it

  waterfalls

  5humbling in silent slide

  the precipice of my effrontery

  poured libations of arms

  like waterwheels

  toward the ground but

  10knowing the fate of sunset things

  I grew desperate and entertained it

  with sudden sprints

  somersaults

  and cartwheels figuring eight

  15It would not stay

  Ring of cloud I said


  high pale ringcloud

  ellipsis of evening moment’s miracle

  where will I go looking for your return

  20and rushing to the rim

  I looked down into the deep dissolution

  I should have held still

  before it

  and been mute

  25cancelled by an oak’s trunk

  and done honors unseen

  and taken the beauty sparingly

  as one who fears to move and

  shatter vision from his eyes

  A Crippled Angel

  A crippled angel bent in a scythe of grief

  mourned in an empty lot

  Passing by I stopped

  amused that immortality should grieve

  5and said

  It must be exquisite

  Smoke came out of the angel’s ears

  the axles

  of slow handwheels of grief

  10and under the white lids of its eyes

  bulged tears of purple light

  Watching the agony diffuse in

  shapeless loss

  I interposed a harp

  15The atmosphere possessed it eagerly

  and the angel

  saying prayers for the things of time

  let its fingers drop and burn

  the lyric strings provoking wonder

  20Grief sounded like an ocean rose

  in bright clothes

  and the fire

  breaking out on the limbs rising

  caught up the branching wings

  25in a flurry of ascent

  Taking a bow I shot transfixing

  the angel midair

  all miracle hanging fire

  on rafters of the sky

  Dropping Eyelids Among the Aerial Ash

  Dropping eyelids among the aerial ash

  I ascending entered the gates of cloud

  westward where the sliver moon

  keeled in sun was setting

  5and sat down on a silver lining to think

  my mind splintered with spears of glass

  and errors of the cold

  Below

  the gorged god lay on the leveled city

  10and suburban bandaged

  and drowsily tolled the reckonless waste

  The clouds mushrooming rose

  and held about his head

  like old incense of damp altars

  15Oh I said in the mistral of bleached

  and naked thought

  blood like a catalyst is evil’s baptismal need

  before the white rose and benefactions

  rise

  20thin curls of hope from cooling lakes of ruin

  and chiseled stone wins

  from the spout of human sacrifice

  powers of mercy

  Darkness pushed the sliver moon

  25from my silver lining and I arose

  the high seed clouds fading

  and went back down into the wounds and cries

  and held up lanterns for the white nurses

  moving quickly in the dark

  I Came Upon a Plateau

  I came upon a plateau

  where mesquite roots

  crazed the stone

  and rains

  5moved glinting dust

  down the crevices

  Calling off rings

  to a council of peaks

  I said

  10Spare me man’s redundancy

  and putting on bright clothes

  sat down in the flat orthodoxy

  Quivering with courtesy

  a snake drew thrust in sines

  15and circles from his length

  rearing coils of warning white

  Succumbing in the still ecstasy

  sinuous through white rows of scales

  l caved in upon eternity

  20saying this use is colorless

  A pious person his heart

  looted and burnt

  sat under a foundation

  a windy cloak clutched round his bones

  25and said

  When the razed temple cooled

  I went in

  and gathered these

  relics of holy urns

  30Behold beneath this cloak

  and I looked in

  at the dark whirls of dust

  The peaks coughing bouldered

  laughter shook to pieces

  35and the snake shed himself in ripples

  across a lake of sand

  Doxology

  I

  Heterodoxy with Ennui

  Should I bold in a moment intrude

  upon a silence, hold my hands properly,

  crossed, in a mock eternity,

  would someone use my lips

  5for an expiation?

  I have heard the silent owl near death

  sees wildly with the comprehension of fire;

  have drunk from those eyes.

  Transplanted my soul to the wind, wound

  10my days round the algae of rapid streams,

  wedded my bones to the throat of flame,

  spirited.

  You have heard it said of old time

  the streets shall flow blood, but the streets

  15swept out with the flood

  shall be deposited upon sand.

  You have this word for a fulfillment.

  An unconstrained fluidity prevails, abides;

  whole notes are rocks

  20and men thirty-seconds,

  all in descending scales,

  unvigiled bastardies of noise:

  the motion of permanence.

  Marble, pottery, signs endure,

  25support fluency, scrollwork,

  where violins ornament, fingers,

  offended with needles of care,

  articulate poised domes.

  This love for the thin and fleet

  30will race through the water-content

  of my heavy death.

  I die at the vernal equinox

  and disorder like a kissing bug

  quaffs my bonds: if I ascend,

  35I shall be congratulatory,

  but if they fawn, desire

  a season before immortality.

  Detain me among the spiral designs

  of an ancient amphora: fulfillment

  40comes before me like spiral designs

  on an ancient amphora in which detain me,

  fixed in rigid speed.

  II

  Orthodoxy with Achievement

  Silent as light in dismal transit

  through the void, I, evanescent,

  45sibilant among my parts,

  fearing the eclipse of a possible glance

  and not glancing, shut-eyed,

  crouch froglike upon my brain,

  hover and keep dark,

  50fervor opposed by dread,

  activity numbed by its mixed result,

  till some awaited drop falls

  upon the mound and chaos

  perfects the eternity of my silence.

  55I cannot count the forms,

  thrown upon the wheel, delineated,

  that have risen and returned

  without accretion; but the spirit

  drops falling upon wings

  60and preens the day with its call:

  none say where in the silence it sleeps.

  Though the sound of my voice

  is a firmamental flaw, my self, in the rockheart,

  in southern oakmoss blown tangled,

  65its supple pincers snaring

  new forks of life, braiding thin limbs

  of the wateroak on gooseberry hills

  beside swamps where the raccoon runs

  and dips his paw in the run-of-the-swampin

  70musky branchwater for darting crawfish

  scuttling a mudwake before them; my self,

  voluble in the dark side of hills

  and placid bays, while the sun grows


  increasing atmosphere to the sea,

  75correcting the fault of dawn; my self,

  the drought of unforested plains,

  the trilobite’s voice,

  the loquacity of an alien room troubled

  by a blowfly, requires my entertainment

  80while we learn the vowels of silence.

  III

  Paradox with Variety

  The temple stands in a rainforest

  where bones have a quick ending.

  Ephemeral as wings in fire

  transparent leaves droop in the earth-steam;

  85growth and decay swallow the traces

  of recent paths.

  I went in. On one side sat the god of creation; on the other,

  the god of destruction. Hatred held their eyes. Going deeper

  to the next chamber, I found the god of destruction and the

  90god of creation tangled sensually on the floor; they gnawed

  and procreated. In the next chamber was majesty: one god

  sat staring at his golden walls.

  I hear an organ playing through the morning rain;

  it sounds like the memory of quilting women.

  95Between the organ and me, California poppies furl

  like splotches of conceit

  in the light and silent rain.

  A robin peeks up from the grass

  and rattles a ladybug in his beak.

  100Mr. Farnham says

  life is fearfully complex.

  When I was lustful I drew twenty maidens

  from the Well of Sacrifice

  and took them to Cozumel.

  105The priests of the steep temples

  longed to smear my body

  with blue ointment.

  We’ve all died since

  and all has been forgotten.

  110Strangers drop pebbles