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

  5the sun midafternoon through the blooms

  and you

  watch lovers and single people

  go over the steep moonbridge at the pond’s narrows

  where flies nip circles

  10in the glass

  and vanish in the widening sight except for an uncertain

  gauze memory of wings

  and as you sip from the small thick cup

  held bird-warm

  15in the hands

  you watch

  the people

  rising on the bridge

  descend into the pond,

  20where bridge and mirrorbridge merge

  at the bank

  returning their images to themselves:

  a grove

  of pepper trees (sgraffito)

  25screens them into isolations of love or loneliness:

  it is enough from this to think in the green tea scent

  and turn to farther things:

  when the spirit comes to the bridge of consciousness

  and climbs higher and higher

  30toward the peak no one reaches live

  but where ascension

  and descension meet

  completing the idea of a bridge

  think where the body is,

  35that going too deep

  it may lose touch,

  wander a ghost in hell

  sing irretrievably in gloom,

  and think

  40how the spirit silvery with vision may

  break loose in high wind

  and go off weightless

  body never to rise or spirit fall again to unity,

  to lovers strolling through pepper-tree shade:

  45paradise was when

  Dante

  regathered from height and depth

  came out onto the soft, green, level earth

  into the natural light, come, sweat, bloodblessings,

  and thinning sheaf of days.

  1959 (1960)

  Requiem

  1.

  Mind

  The strawberries along the roadbank in the hills bloomed,

  the starwhite petals brilliant and melty in the sun as frost:

  a glimmer of angels through the pines

  rained fine needles, blanketing the rich fruit.

  5On Rome’s hills stand Respighi’s musical pines,

  aural columns of light, beingless but with minds.

  Rising from banana trees in Mexico one, beyond

  the clouds, comes into skies of pines on rocky tops.

  Thus when I saw the strawberries, I rose into the singing trees

  10and the angels, white

  sharks in a glittering sea,

  massacred me.

  My blood drops still to the red pulp of wild strawberries

  whose white shark flowers

  15will call any man into the waters of the boughs.

  Oh my mind runs down the moon’s glass tears

  and plucks them up (tektites) frozen from the land.

  No creation equals a moment’s consciousness.

  No cymbal cones and crashes peaks so.

  20No white shark stabs so.

  Along the blade the dune thistle blows,

  opening thorny hemispheres

  of yellow florets half-deep in purple stain,

  and spears of onion grass rise sleek and clean

  25from the gray and gritty sand.

  To stand with landward hair enduring these

  requires sharks in the eyes, the backing of seas.

  The coffin-carrier cries and the crow “cars” over the salt creeks.

  2.

  Event

  The day after,

  30after the golden culminations and unfuneraled dead,

  after the nuclear trees drifting

  on cloudy stems,

  and the fruits of knowledge

  and the knowledge of those golden high-capped trees,

  35flaking, settling out,

  after the transfigurations

  and dark visitations,

  groans and twitching resentments,

  after the golden culminations

  40and the trunks of violent trees stalking the vacant land,

  there rose an irrelevant dawn:

  the white shell lay spiraled on the beach as it had lain

  and the surf, again unheard,

  eased to primal rhythms

  45of jellyfishing heart, breaking into mind;

  ants came out and withered in the sun;

  the white shark

  sucked at the edge of the sea on the silent, scarlet morning;

  and all the white souls sailing

  50sailed, funneling out into eternity;

  by the wharf, dolphin bobbled

  belly-up with his poet, all his nudging sea-cleaning done;

  briery the earth, iced

  with bones, rolled into time.

  3.

  Contraction

  55Repenting creation, God said,

  As you know, I Am,

  God,

  because I do not have to be consistent:

  what was lawful to my general plan

  60does not jibe

  with my new specific will;

  what the old law healed

  is reopened

  in the new.

  65I have drawn up many covenants to eternity.

  Returning silence unto silence,

  the Sumerian between the rivers lies.

  His skull crushed and moded into rock

  does not leak or peel.

  70The gold earring lies in the powder

  of his silken, perished lobe.

  The incantations, sheep trades, and night-gatherings

  with central leaping fires,

  roar and glare still in the crow’s-foot

  75walking of his stylus on clay.

  Under surgery the sick man rolls and

  vomits on the temple floor,

  the anesthetic words of reciting priests

  licking grooves through his frantic mind.

  80The dust has dried up all his tears.

  He sleeps out the old unending drug of time.

  The rose dies, man dies, the world dies, the god

  grows and fails, the born universe dies

  into renewal,

  85and all endures the change,

  totally lost and totally retained.

  1957 (1959)

  Guide

  You cannot come to unity and remain material:

  in that perception is no perceiver:

  when you arrive

  you have gone too far:

  5at the Source you are in the mouth of Death:

  you cannot

  turn around in

  the Absolute: there are no entrances or exits

  no precipitations of forms

  10to use like tongs against the formless:

  no freedom to choose:

  to be

  you have to stop not-being and break

  off from is to flowing and

  15this is the sin you weep and praise:

  origin is your original sin:

  the return you long for will ease your guilt

  and you will have your longing:

  the wind that is my guide said this: it

  20should know having

  given up everything to eternal being but

  direction:

  how I said can I be glad and sad: but a man goes

  from one foot to the other:

  25wisdom wisdom:

  to be glad and sad at once is also unity

  and death:

  wisdom wisdom: a peachblossom blooms on a particular

  tree on a particular day:

  30unity cannot do anything in particular:

  are these the thoughts you want me to think I said but

  the wind was gone and there was no more knowledge then.

  1959 (1960)

  Expressions of Sea Level<
br />
  Peripherally the ocean

  marks itself

  against the gauging land

  it erodes and

  5builds:

  it is hard to name

  the changeless:

  speech without words,

  silence renders it:

  10and mid-ocean,

  sky sealed unbroken to sea,

  there is no way to know

  the ocean’s speech,

  intervolved and markless,

  15breaking against

  no boulder-held fingerland:

  broken, surf things are expressions:

  the sea speaks far from its core,

  far from its center relinquishes the

  20long-held roar:

  of any mid-sea

  speech, the yielding resistances

  of wind and water, spray,

  swells, whitecaps, moans,

  25it is a dream the sea makes,

  an inner problem, a self-deep

  dark and private anguish

  revealed in small,

  by hints, to

  30keen watchers on the shore:

  only with the staid land

  is the level conversation really held:

  only in the meeting of rock and

  sea is

  35hard relevance shattered into light:

  upbeach the clam shell

  holds smooth dry sand,

  remembrance of tide:

  water can go at

  40least that high: in

  the night, if you stay

  to watch, or

  if you come tomorrow at the right time,

  you can see the shell caught

  45again in wash, the

  sand turbulence changed,

  new sand left smooth: if

  the shell washes loose,

  flops over,

  50buries its rim in flux,

  it will not be silence for

  a shell that spoke: the

  half-buried back will

  tell how the ocean dreamed

  55breakers against the land:

  into the salt marshes the water comes fast with rising tide:

  an inch of rise spreads by yards

  through tidal creeks, round fingerways of land:

  the marsh grasses stem-logged

  60combine wind and water motions,

  slow from dry trembling

  to heavier motions of wind translated through

  cushioned stems; tide-held slant of grasses

  bent into the wind:

  65is there a point of rest where

  the tide turns: is there one

  infinitely tiny higher touch

  on the legs of egrets, the

  skin of back, bay-eddy reeds:

  70is there an instant when fullness is,

  without loss, complete: is there a

  statement perfect in its speech:

  how do you know the moon

  is moving: see the dry

  75casting of the beach worm

  dissolve at the

  delicate rising touch:

  that is the

  expression of sea level,

  80the talk of giants,

  of ocean, moon, sun, of everything,

  spoken in a dampened grain of sand.

  1962 (1963)

  Unsaid

  Have you listened for the things I have left out?

  I am nowhere near the end yet and already

  hear

  the hum of omissions,

  5the chant of vacancies, din of

  silences:

  there is the other side of matter, antimatter,

  the antiproton:

  we

  10have measured the proton: it has mass: we

  have measured the antiproton: it has negative mass:

  you will not

  hear me completely even at this early point

  unless you hear my emptiness:

  15go back:

  how can I

  tell you what I have not said: you must look for it

  yourself: that

  side has weight, too, though words cannot bear it

  20out: listen for the things I have left out:

  I am

  aware

  of them, as you must be, or you will miss

  the non-song

  25in my singing: it is not that words cannot say

  what is missing: it is only that what is missing

  cannot

  be missed if

  spoken: read the parables of my unmaking:

  30feel the ris-

  ing bubble’s trembling walls: rush into the domes

  these wordy arches shape: hear

  me

  when I am

  35silent: gather the boundaried vacancies.

  1959 (1963)

  Mechanism

  Honor a going thing, goldfinch, corporation, tree,

  morality: any working order,

  animate or inanimate: it

  has managed directed balance,

  5the incoming and outgoing energies are working right,

  some energy left to the mechanism,

  some ash, enough energy held

  to maintain the order in repair,

  assure further consumption of entropy,

  10expending energy to strengthen order:

  honor the persisting reactor,

  the container of change, the moderator: the yellow

  bird flashes black wing-bars

  in the new-leaving wild cherry bushes by the bay,

  15startles the hawk with beauty,

  flitting to a branch where

  flash vanishes into stillness,

  hawk addled by the sudden loss of sight:

  honor the chemistries, platelets, hemoglobin kinetics,

  20the light-sensitive iris, the enzymic intricacies

  of control,

  the gastric transformations, seed

  dissolved to acrid liquors, synthesized into

  chirp, vitreous humor, knowledge,

  25blood compulsion, instinct: honor the

  unique genes,

  molecules that reproduce themselves, divide into

  sets, the nucleic grain transmitted

  in slow change through ages of rising and falling form,

  30some cells set aside for the special work, mind

  or perception rising into orders of courtship,

  territorial rights, mind rising

  from the physical chemistries

  to guarantee that genes will be exchanged, male

  35and female met, the satisfactions cloaking a deeper

  racial satisfaction:

  heat kept by a feathered skin:

  the living alembic, body heat maintained (bunsen

  burner under the flask)

  40so the chemistries can proceed, reaction rates

  interdependent, self-adjusting, with optimum

  efficiency—the vessel firm, the flame

  staying: isolated, contained reactions! the precise and

  necessary worked out of random, reproducible,

  45the handiwork redeemed from chance, while the

  goldfinch, unconscious of the billion operations

  that stay its form, flashes, chirping (not a

  great songster) in the bay cherry bushes wild of leaf.

  1959

  Batsto

  After two gray sunless days of warm

  noreaster windy rains the sun breaking

  clear this morning, over the bayside

  field the sparrowhawk foraging in the

  5oval air, we took Route 9 north through

  Pleasantville, past the pleasant

  inviting cemetery crisp with light,

  over the railroad, crosstown to the

  Absecon meadows and into the sycamore

  10leaf-letting hills beyond and through

  the housing development with groves

  of old leaf-keeping darker
oaks and

  northward past Seaview Country Club

  with the high round dining room and

  15young rich men in casuals crossing the

  street to the golf-links and on past

  fields and hedges, the scarlotry of

  maple leaves, sassafras and skinny

  birch resplendent in the clean sun,

  20the winding flat highway, empty

  but for slight local traffic, and onto

  Garden State Parkway to bridge the

  wide-mouthed Mullica River that spreads

  out in brown still meadows to the sea,

  25an occasional gull, the skeletal

  cedar upriver against the land, off

  to secondary roads not too well marked

  and along the north bank of the

  Mullica westward into the Wharton

  30Tract, now a state park, with ghost

  towns and endless acres in neglect,

  stopping at a pinerise to see the

  cemetery of the French family, death

  after more than a century light as

  35the morning sun, where Thomas French,

  a year older than his wife, lies since

  1844, his wife three years later