The Complete Poems of A R Ammons, Volume 2 Read online

  are the windings saved:

  wiggles of brook worms, earworms,

  10flickers of fire on

  timber or walls or

  (lostly) stars—shades of

  actions, where are they:

  there where motions

  15are stilled, stored, rehearsed,

  recalled, there, there!

  1976 (1977)

  Strolls

  The brook gives me

  sparkles plenty, an

  abundance, but asks

  nothing of me:

  5snow thickets

  and scrawny

  snowwork of hedgerows,

  still gold weeds, and

  snow-bent cedar gatherings

  10provide

  feasts of disposition

  (figure, color, weight, proportion)

  and require

  not even that I notice:

  15the near-winter quartermoon

  sliding high almost

  into color at four-thirty—

  the abundance of clarity

  along the rose ridge line!

  20alone, I’m not alone:

  a standoffishness and reasonableness

  in things finds

  me or I find that

  in them: sand, falls,

  25furrow, bluff—

  things one, speaking things

  not words, would

  have found to say.

  1976 (1978)

  Getting Through

  The brook has worked

  out the prominences of

  a bend so as to find

  curvature’s sliding

  5speed and now thaw

  or shower can reach it

  to shell the shale out

  from an overhung ledge:

  the ledge bends way

  10over as if to contemplate

  its solution in a spill:

  right now I think

  the skinny old arborvita’s

  roots may be holding everything

  15together: but when the spill

  comes the brook will have

  another heap

  in its way, another

  shambles to get

  20through or around: or

  over: how much time does

  a brook have: how much

  time a brook has!

  (1978)

  Eventually Is Soon Enough

  Lee of wind-skinned rises

  long drifts of

  fallout snow soak in the thaw:

  the brook, the sky bright

  5for days, steps lightly

  down ledge steps:

  anything black enough

  to be furrow soil will turn

  out to be old snow bank,

  10trickling:

  snowplows plowed snow

  into shrubrows that give

  reservoir humped mesh:

  thickets that paused a lot

  15out of the air

  streak it with chilling shade,

  cold huddling, keep

  flood from falling,

  give away a little at a

  20time longer than

  roofs and slanty, beam-turned banks do:

  this soundless (no rain or

  thunder) upstirring of

  the brook!

  25the mediations and mixtures,

  flows and pauses: one sees on the bank

  of a cleared ditch

  swatches of ground moss so green

  one thinks with relief

  30spring won’t have to improve any on that.

  1977 (1978)

  Density

  A bluejay’s the clarified

  bush’s only ornament:

  except for two or three

  tan-fine leaves he

  5rattles on a twig:

  and there’s where summer’s

  hidden trickle

  got its tune, the end of

  a corrugated pipe

  10undercrossing the road:

  and down there

  farther where density

  hid all but the hermit

  lark’s song

  15is a gang of wires, once

  woodvine: winter

  putting so much

  away leaves too

  much room to see.

  1976 (1979)

  Vehicle

  I take myself, in

  the goal of my destiny,

  the way the wind takes

  me, something to

  5stir, run, and dismiss,

  or the way dust

  or falling snow take

  me (obstruction,

  scaffolding) a form

  10of delay—that is,

  nothing to nothing:

  but meanwhile my

  body knows the wind and

  calls it out,

  15and dust and snow,

  the running brook,

  praise themselves seen in

  my praising sight.

  (1979)

  Response

  Fuzzy baby-spider ball

  hanging in the spirea bush,

  the harder the wind blew the

  tighter

  5it shrank, shaking and

  bobbing, but after the wind

  calmed widened airy with radiality:

  but yesterday late

  I blew one time hard on it and it

  10spilled spooling to the ground:

  fine beads, the babies stirred,

  cleaning themselves up in

  reverse web-flow: one bead

  went off a way on a haywire web

  15but, back to mainline, came

  stringing up, the final bead:

  dark tightens the ball hard.

  (1979)

  Easter Morning

  I have a life that did not become,

  that turned aside and stopped,

  astonished:

  I hold it in me like a pregnancy or

  5as on my lap a child

  not to grow or grow old but dwell on

  it is to his grave I most

  frequently return and return

  to ask what is wrong, what was

  10wrong, to see it all by

  the light of a different necessity

  but the grave will not heal

  and the child,

  stirring, must share my grave

  15with me, an old man having

  gotten by on what was left

  when I go back to my home country in these

  fresh far-away days, it’s convenient to visit

  everybody, aunts and uncles, those who used to say,

  20look how he’s shooting up, and the

  trinket aunts who always had a little

  something in their pocketbooks, cinnamon bark

  or a penny or nickel, and uncles who

  were the rumored fathers of cousins

  25who whispered of them as of great, if

  troubled, presences, and school

  teachers, just about everybody older

  (and some younger) collected in one place

  waiting, particularly, but not for

  30me, mother and father there, too, and others

  close, close as burrowing

  under skin, all in the graveyard

  assembled, done for, the world they

  used to wield, have trouble and joy

  35in, gone

  _________

  the child in me that could not become

  was not ready for others to go,

  to go on into change, blessings and

  horrors, but stands there by the road

  40where the mishap occurred, crying out for

  help, come and fix this or we

  can’t get by, but the great ones who

  were to return, they could not or did

  not hear and went on in a flurry and

  45now, I say in the graveyard, here

  lies the flurry, now it can’t come

  back
with help or helpful asides, now

  we all buy the bitter

  incompletions, pick up the knots of

  50horror, silently raving, and go on

  crashing into empty ends not

  completions, not rondures the fullness

  has come into and spent itself from

  I stand on the stump

  55of a child, whether myself

  or my little brother who died, and

  yell as far as I can, I cannot leave this place, for

  for me it is the dearest and the worst,

  it is life nearest to life which is

  60life lost: it is my place where

  I must stand and fail,

  calling attention with tears

  to the branches not lofting

  boughs into space, to the barren

  65air that holds the world that was my world

  though the incompletions

  (& completions) burn out

  standing in the flash high-burn

  momentary structure of ash, still it

  70is a picture-book, letter-perfect

  Easter morning: I have been for a

  walk: the wind is tranquil: the brook

  works without flashing in an abundant

  tranquility: the birds are lively with

  75voice: I saw something I had

  never seen before: two great birds,

  maybe eagles, blackwinged, whitenecked

  and -headed, came from the south oaring

  the great wings steadily; they went

  80directly over me, high up, and kept on

  due north: but then one bird,

  the one behind, veered a little to the

  left and the other bird kept on seeming

  not to notice for a minute: the first

  85began to circle as if looking for

  something, coasting, resting its wings

  on the down side of some of the circles:

  the other bird came back and they both

  circled, looking perhaps for a draft;

  90they turned a few more times, possibly

  rising—at least, clearly resting—

  then flew on falling into distance till

  they broke across the local bush and

  trees: it was a sight of bountiful

  95majesty and integrity: the having

  patterns and routes, breaking

  from them to explore other patterns or

  better ways to routes, and then the

  return: a dance sacred as the sap in

  100the trees, permanent in its descriptions

  as the ripples round the brook’s

  ripplestone: fresh as this particular

  flood of burn breaking across us now

  from the sun.

  1977 (1979)

  White Dwarf

  As I grow older

  arcs swollen inside

  now and then fall

  back, collapsing, into

  5forming walls:

  the temperature shoots

  up with what I am not

  and am: from

  multiplicities, dark

  10knots, twanging twists,

  structures come into sight,

  chief of these

  a blade of fire only now

  so late, so sharp and standing,

  15burning confusion up.

  1976

  Distraction

  During my glorious,

  crazy years, I

  went about the business of

  the universe relentlessly,

  5inquired of goat

  and zygote,

  frill and floss,

  touched, tasted,

  prodded, and tested and as

  10it were kept the

  whole thing going

  by

  central attention’s

  central node:

  15now my anklebones hurt

  when I stand up

  or the mail truck

  drops by to bury

  me under two

  20small obligations: I

  can’t quite remember

  what call I went to find

  or why so much

  fell to me: in fact,

  25sometimes

  a whole green sunset

  will wash dark

  as if it could go

  right by without me.

  1978 (1980)

  Rapids

  Fall’s leaves are redder than

  spring’s flowers, have no pollen,

  and also sometimes fly, as the wind

  schools them out or down in shoals

  5or droves: though I

  have not been here long, I can

  look up at the sky at night and tell

  how things are likely to go for

  the next hundred million years:

  10the universe will probably not find

  a way to vanish nor I

  in all that time reappear.

  (1980)

  Neighbors

  How little I have really cared about nature: I always

  thought the woods idyllic and let it go at that: but,

  look, one tree, the near pine, cracked off in high wind,

  _________

  dry rot at the ground, and coming down sheared every

  5branch off one side of the sweetgum: one tree, trying

  to come up under another, has only one bough in light:

  an ice storm some years ago broke the tops off several

  trees that now splinter into sprouts: one sweetgum,

  bent over bow-like to the ground, has given up its

  10top and let an arrow of itself rise midway: ivy has

  made Ann Pollard’s pine an ivy tree: I can’t regain

  the lost idyllic at all, but the woods are here with us.

  1975 (1977)

  Keepsake

  I feel the brook as it were

  teased and betrayed me, its

  finery of glitter enchanting

  my mind and leading me off

  5and off again down the accurate

  indifferences of mechanical

  shift and spill, inexhaustible

  burn of glint and glide: oh,

  for when I could give no more

  10attention up and needed to be

  looked for, the brook kept

  its old lessons tucked away

  as usual in its flowings and

  answered only as I guessed it:

  15but you, lover, prowled the world

  to be found and, found, found me:

  if you part your lips, the

  shifts and spills in your

  eyes will break me open: this

  20lost, I’m unlost and unbetrayed.

  1979 (1979)

  Antithesis

  If no material and no resort

  will hold us in place,

  placate and pacify us,

  then we have to make up

  5something out of nothing

  (a pliable material) and

  loft it (it is not heavy)

  high enough to reach beyond

  the highest branch we could

  10pull down, and we have to make it

  of perfect understanding

  (know-it-all silence) and

  able to respond in the fullest

  measure (the other side of

  15emptiness, the broadest

  welcome): where can

  dense, straw-strung flesh

  cry to for its essential

  answering other except beyond,

  20way, way beyond the star

  points resolving into galaxies.

  1978 (1979)

  Traveling Shows

  I found vision and it

  was terrific, the sight

  enabling and abiding, but

  I couldn’t get these

  5old bones there and light’s

  a byproduct of

  rapid decomposition:
/>   I found power, too, but

  sick, meal-swollen children

  10refused it:

  no one breathes the held

  air in words’ winds:

  more than could be

  promised, the many

  15graces of accurate

  turnings, or even thought

  to seek, I found, I

  found: it was nothing:

  the ghost of the made

  20world, leaving, enters

  the real—no, not that much:

  the real world

  succeeds the made and,

  burnt out, shuts down.

  Breaking Out

  I have let all my balloons aloose

  what will become of them now

  pricked they will show some weight

  or caught under a cloud lack

  5ebullience to feel through

  but they are all let loose

  yellow, red, blue, thin-skinned, tough

  and let go they have put me down

  I was an earth thing all along

  10my feet are catching in the brush

  1977 (1978)

  Range

  In the storm window’s upper left

  hand corner, between the panes,

  a tiny spider angles to catch one

  of two fall flies thrice his size:

  5the flies, addled, sidle about,

  over and away, and buzz loose

  confined between the windows and

  bowl over into the corner occasionally,

  snapping webs, guy wires, cross

  10references: the predator feints

  at the fly-throughs and, missing,

  sits before diving to re-build:

  it tests patience when what you need

  is too big to handle: but the flies

  15may weaken and wander where the weakest

  web can hold down one of their

  few possibilities left,

  while the fine spider may go on

  living on air if need be till this plenty.

  (1979)

  Dry Spell Spiel

  It’s so far to the brook the squirrel

  nips dew off the garage roof

  dipping down from tile tip to tip,

  stopping head sideways and one paw up in still

  5perception (fear) then melting

  into motion and need: this is another