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

  day, high blue, that won’t leave

  drop or dampening anywhere

  by noon: even the brook way off

  10trickles clinging to the ledges: how many

  territories are riddled with routes, easements

  to the brook banks, as grackles, robins,

  catbirds get through: the snake lies

  all the way long in and dimples

  15the transparence with the brilliant

  surfacing of two diamond nostrils, needlepoints

  that give the whole length air: the

  pheasant keeps to underbrush on his way:

  a salamander is sticking with the wet

  20leaves under my leaky outdoor faucet.

  1978 (1979)

  Mountain Wind

  I went out into the cancellations of the wind

  and stood still

  my arms up stiff

  like shrubs

  5Oh I said I have discovered my consequence

  This celebration of

  water and lust is not

  my celebration but a speech

  the deep says and sends the wind through

  10I touched the sharp tips

  of stalks and stood in the lone

  hurry of time down the mountain slope

  1967 (1973)

  Night Finding

  Open and naked under the big snow

  the hill cemetery by the falls

  looks felled to stump stone

  and the rich spray of the summer

  5falls gathers absent into

  glazes of ice wall: here in the

  backyard thicket sway-floats

  of honeysucklebush brush

  (once misted berry red)

  10bend down to solid touch,

  and weed clumps break off

  into halfway teepees:

  pheasant in the earliest pearl

  of dusk bluster in, swirls of

  15landing and looking, and settled

  to the dusk mode, walk under

  the snow slants and shelters easing

  through brush fox would noticeably jar.

  1978 (1980)

  Fourth Dimension

  Reason can’t end:

  it is discourse, motion

  to find motion, reason to

  find reason to abandon

  5reason: when the argument

  no longer thruways, the

  road closes: poetry can

  come complete, take on

  shape, end into

  10winding up itself, any

  violation of which

  totally violating:

  the shape does not depend

  elsewhere to make itself

  15felt: it is as

  it is: it can’t be cast

  aside except to cast that

  shape aside, no part in it

  free to cast free any

  20part: improved, it

  concludes in dust,

  an end both as

  itself and not as itself.

  Country Music

  Snow melt and flood

  rushes finished, the

  brook evens down to

  groundwater—black

  5clarity, water glass,

  of the central bed

  bending white spill-arc

  hooks over the ledge!

  oh, the lolling, timeless

  10music, inharmony so

  various it finds harmony’s

  underlying mix: but

  the next stepledge

  upstream sends down

  15high, thin, hushed

  _________

  tones, an obbligato,

  the far range filtered

  free to a band of drowse.

  1978 (1978)

  Wiring

  Radiance comes from

  on high and, staying,

  sends down silk

  lines to the flopping

  5marionette, me, but

  love comes from

  under the ruins and

  sends the lumber up

  limber into leaf that

  10touches so high it nearly

  puts out the radiance

  1978 (1979)

  Sunday at McDonald’s

  In the bleak land of foreverness no

  one lives but only, crushed and buffeted,

  now: now, now, now every star glints

  perishing while now slides under and

  5away, slippery as light, time-vapor:

  what can butterflies do or clear-eyed

  babies gumming french fries—nature

  is holding them, somehow, veering them

  off into growth holdings, forms

  10brought to peaks of splendor, sharp

  energies burring into each other to

  set off new progressions through the

  _________

  rustle and mix, rot and slush: is

  this the way it is: sometimes a man

  15will stand up, clear and settled as

  a bright day, and seem to look through

  the longest times and roilings to

  the still, star-bending, fixed ahead.

  1977 (1979)

  Sweetened Change

  The small white-headed man pops out

  his side and begins the ten-minute

  procedure of getting her out the car:

  he unloads the wheelchair first:

  5the wife, snow white, gets turned

  around, the toes so carefully tender

  and tended, till she sits looking as

  if headed sideways: she finds in herself

  weight’s structure and, rising, falls

  10translated to the wheels: such

  satisfaction and relief! but, now, the

  leg must be elevated, billows and strings,

  and special consideration given the spine’s

  new crimp: it all works out, some

  15tucking in and looking around: off they roll

  through the hospital doors: soon the quick

  man is out again, squeals away to parking

  spaces allotted longer stalls of time:

  he jogs back by and back through the doors

  20he goes: one mate gives out and the other

  buzzes fast to sing he’s not alone and idle.

  1978 (1979)

  Parting

  She was already lean when

  a stroke or two slapped

  her face like drawn

  claw prints: akilter, she

  5ate less and

  sat too much on the edge

  of beds looking a width too

  wide out of windows:

  she lessened: getting

  10out for a good day, she sat

  on the bench still and

  thin as a porch post:

  the children are all

  off, she would think, but a

  15minute later,

  startle, where are the children,

  as if school had let

  out: her husband watched

  her till loosened away himself

  20for care: then,

  seeming to know but never

  quite sure, she was put in

  a slightly less hopeful

  setting: she watched her

  25husband tremble in to call

  and shoot up high head-bent

  eyes: her mind

  flashed clear through, she was

  sure of it, she had seen

  30that one before: her husband

  _________

  longed to say goodbye or else

  hello, but the room stiffened

  as if two lovers had just caught

  on sight, every move rigid

  35misfire in that perilous fire.

  1978 (1978)

  Feel Like Traveling On

  Sit down and be patient:

  sure, it’s a beautiful,

  endless, lonely Sunday

  afternoon: the old people<
br />
  5are in their graves:

  the old places are deserted:

  the times of all those

  times, faces, flavors

  a few minds left hold:

  10sure, ahead the chief

  business is tearing the rest

  of the way loose: but by

  the empty take the full:

  sit down, find something

  15to read: a grand possibility

  was made: who knows

  what became of it

  1978 (1980)

  Poverty

  I’m walking home from, what,

  a thousandth walk this year

  along the same macadam’s edge

  (pebbly) the ragweed rank

  5but not blooming yet,

  a rose cloud passed to the

  east that against sundown would be

  blue-gray, the moon up nearly

  full, splintering

  10through the tips of street pine,

  and the hermit lark downhill

  in a long glade cutting

  spirals of musical ice, and I

  realize that it is not the same for

  15me as for others, that

  being here to be here

  with others is for others.

  (1979)

  Givings

  Why not let the name go with the body

  since things will be

  as they appear

  a shambles of change with now and then an absolute

  5loss and most changes, re-directions not

  the kind you can bend back into shape

  and not even in the midridge of the overspill

  an island to stop on and consider in stillness time

  passing

  10but only in the interweavings, flows back and

  forth, under and over, around and through

  does reality hold

  to a single face its name and that can

  on a stormy spring morning seem so underbuilt

  15with dream, reality & appearance flow together away

  1978 (1979)

  An Improvisation for the Stately Dwelling

  This fall morning is pretty much

  like a fall morning

  the bottoms of poplars

  and tops of beeches

  5leafless

  a wind NNW

  has re-lifted the geese

  and sent them southerly

  I know a man whose cancer has

  10got him just to the point

  he looks changed by a flight of stairs

  people pass him and speak

  extra-brightly

  he asks nothing else

  15he is like a rock

  reversed, that is, the rock has a solid

  body and shakes only

  reflected in the water but he shakes

  in body only,

  20his spirit a boulder of light

  nature

  includes too much

  and art can’t include enough

  the sky is soft this morning

  25all gray,

  regioned here and there with ivory

  light

  the flames of climbing vines are

  shedding out, falling back,

  30stringing fire

  the brook almost blisters with

  cool equations among the fallen colors

  what is to become of us we know

  how are we to be taken by it or take it

  (1979)

  An Improvisation for Jerald Bullis

  It’s not much of a fall with

  hemlocks

  the new green already

  advanced,

  5needles inwardly hidden

  turn brown

  and make not much of shedding

  catch the right

  windy day to catch

  10the show right

  one day in a high wind,

  every ready needle already

  gone, nothing

  will fall

  15though the billows of boughs

  heave and slosh

  but another day after a

  calm

  the needles wait in a small wind

  20for the windtwist to reap them,

  a bunch, salience, weave, or warp

  of them coming down

  spinning or

  striking boughs and, whooshed up,

  25spinning again

  till

  on the ground

  a fairly unnoticeable, diffuse

  browning

  30comes over things,

  particular needles subsumed and

  nothing outlined

  _________

  so many falls all summer and

  even earlier in earliest spring and

  35later falls than fall, wild carrot

  seeds held in ribbed cups

  sprinkling out over ice

  the speaker, delivered out of himself,

  places his “I”

  40anywhere

  in rose or rat

  and feels the speech he has deserved to

  say,

  himself so much given over, unfolded, that he

  45is mostly without interest

  light fills volumes

  shade clears

  the big garden spider sits in air between

  the two hedge headlands and doesn’t move

  50enough to close down for dusk

  (1979)

  Persistences

  Wind, though in the temple,

  criticizes the pillars,

  from bronze walls and set

  floors

  5takes haze away, a small

  flour

  given back to the desert:

  nuzzles into alcoves and porticoes

  as if glad to

  10take on the curvature

  _________

  and drowse

  but leaks and brushes away again

  restless with what

  remains a while:

  15the theorem of the wind

  no pigment, wall, or word

  disproves: propositions

  scatter before it,

  grow up in brier thickets

  20and thistle thickets:

  still, from our own ruins,

  we thrash out the

  snakes and mice,

  shoo the lean ass away,

  25and plant a row of something:

  we know,

  we say to the wind, but we will

  come back again and back:

  in debris we make a holding as

  30insubstantial and permanent as mirage.

  1974 (1978)

  WORLDLY HOPES (1982)

  to the memory of Elliott Coleman

  Room Conditioner

  After rain I

  walk and looking

  down glimpse

  the moon: I

  5back up to see

  and the puddle splices

  onto two hundred

  thousand miles of

  height two

  10hundred thousand

  miles of depth

  1977 (1978)

  Extravaganza

  A leaf picked

  up by the

  wind could

  (if it could)

  5tell a good

  deal about

  big affairs, volumes,

  currents, long

  tugs, ascensions,

  10wheels quite

  truly and be

  (dropped by a

  _________

  ditchhedge) still

  nothing

  15more than a bit of

  nothing.

  1976 (1980)

  Righting Wrongs

  Dew turns

  the burgundy smoke

  bush ice-white,

  puffy airiness

  5glittering

  substance-low:

  impatient with dull

  wind’s and slow sun’s

/>   lightenings,

  10I kicking jar

  a shower out, losing,

  though, ice for rise.

  1979 (1981)

  Subsumption

  From

  scientific and esthetic

  ramblings & bewilderings,

  voice, the clearing

  5through tangled

  tone,

  will sometimes

  just do

  something, blow

  10a leaf off a

  branch

  without

  ambiguity or equivocation

  or, a rose,

  15unwind

  into

  clarity

  simply

  1974

  Immoderation

  If something is too

  big, enlarging it

  may correct it:

  a skinny thing

  5acquires great force

  pushed next to nothing.

  Vines

  In late August scarlet

  fire breaks

  out in the spruce top,

  a flame flamelike

  5in disposition but

  coal-still

  to glow but then,

  the spruce holding

  green, October comes

  10and frost flakes fire

  off the skinny

  highwires of arising.

  Extrication

  I tangled with

  the world to

  let it go

  but couldn’t free

  5it: so I made

  words

  to wrestle in my

  stead and went

  off silent to

  10the quick flow

  of brooks, the

  slow flow of stone

  Spruce Woods

  It’s so still

  today that a

  dipping bough means

  a squirrel