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

  5has gone through.

  (1980)

  I Went Back

  I went back

  to my old home

  and the furrow

  of each year

  5plowed like

  surf across

  the place had

  not washed

  memory away.

  (1978)

  Snow Roost

  Last night the

  fluffiest inhabitant

  filled the

  cedar forks deep, but this

  5windy morning,

  gusts blizzard-sharp

  explode clumps of flight

  into local blindings.

  1978

  Shading Flight In

  Lit clouds diffuse tree

  shadows etiolated long

  across the grass-gold winter

  lawn, trunks and branches as if

  5risen aground to a deep

  remembrance:

  substances—there may not always

  be wood, but insubstantial shadow

  will, always find a solid source.

  1980

  Precious Weak Fields

  Mercy’s so slight it’s like

  a glitter-bit in granite or a single

  pane-sun in snow flint or the warp-weave of

  slice-light netting a shallows stone.

  Night Chill

  My big round yew

  can stand a gust

  into a million

  presences: too

  5many needles

  to get through

  to get through

  except drift through:

  birds in there peep and sleep,

  10puffy in the slow hurry.

  Calling

  My endorsing song blocks out

  to blot out, identifies in keyed

  sets and replications,

  high rises and office

  5bldgs, baroque interiors and

  mirroring exteriors (spelled out

  intricacies) to obliterate into

  emptiness, the promise,

  cure, commencement, my

  10self-endorsing song, flattened,

  snaking its way out,

  reaching to weave into its rise.

  Reaction Rates

  My hanging strawberry

  pot stops drops

  geometrically:

  _________

  I gush water in the

  5pot top

  and because of interior

  runoff it

  streams through the bottom

  hole but

  10because of interior

  absorption stops

  rather rapidly

  1976

  Progress Report

  Now I’m

  into things

  so small

  when I

  5say boo

  I disappear

  Lost & Found

  How I came to

  be what I am

  I can’t unwind

  and what’s left

  5from what I

  was won’t

  _________

  turn my way

  away so I

  get upfront

  10to ongoing

  and seek in

  the freshwater of

  time breaking

  into now

  15the frail

  possibilities

  of a singular

  start, the re-decision

  to keep it up, till

  20now (vanishing)

  can become the slice

  constantly

  standing here.

  1980

  Epistemology

  A bit of

  truth

  told pops

  its pip

  5and falls

  small

  into its

  (if bitter)

  _________

  consequence

  10but the bit

  untold

  avoided collects

  about it

  networks

  15bindings

  of disguise &

  going

  around

  till, an

  20enormous posture,

  it can’t be

  identified

  solved or made

  to disappear &

  25so by

  recalcitrance &

  complication

  comes

  to represent

  30the world

  truly

  ours.

  1978 (1979)

  The Role of Society in the Artist

  Society sent me this invitation to go to

  hell and

  delighted not to be overlooked I thought

  I could make arrangements to accommodate

  5it and went off

  where, however, I

  _________

  did the burning by myself, developing

  fortunately some fairly thick shields

  against blazing and some games

  10one of which was verse by which I used

  illusion to put the flames out,

  turning flares into mirrors

  of seeming: society

  attracted to this bedazzlement wanted me

  15to acknowledge how it had been

  largely responsible and I said oh yes it gave

  me the language by which to send me

  clear invitations and society

  designated me of social value and lifted me

  20out of hell so I could better share

  paradisal paradigms with it

  and it said isn’t it generous

  of society to let you walk here

  far from hell—society does this because

  25it likes your keen sense of acquired sight

  & word: how wonderful of you to say so, I said,

  and took some of whatever was being

  passed around but every night went out

  into the forest to spew fire

  30that blazoned tree trunks and set

  stumps afire and society found me out there

  & warmed itself and said it liked my unconventional

  verses best & I invited society to go to hell

  1977 (1978)

  Scribbles

  To unwrite the writing, unweave, ravel out

  the woven, unsay the spoken, and make hard

  to perceive the seen and known—I go about

  to happenstance, loose thread, coincidental

  5margin and find (if on purpose) by accidence

  the brook dimpling shallow through rocks and

  think nothing clear on that surface or below

  it! and clouds are a fuzzy subject, running

  together in flat continuums or breaking

  10filed away or, best and above it all, simply

  dissolving: but the hard writing, the in-chipped

  and scrawled, the cut and trenched, that must be

  made palimpsest (too much truth already out)

  so that the song that is the song of

  15the hurt and lost cannot emerge through

  the singing nor any dark taint light:

  someday, I must read the text

  but not now, let it not be now, not today

  already listing with the grievances of avoidance

  20but, weatherwise, transparent: or if I am lucky

  I will so encushion it with the wires of

  verseline, so rustle it with stuttering, or

  burn it down with raving, the polish, that failing

  sight will miss the failing seen or get no

  25more from it than a haze of sense: my clear

  writing . . . to confuse, subvert, renounce!

  my babbling, to make dumb, my light, to hide!

  _________

  perplexity is such that sometimes it must be

  embraced before it will clear, to the deep

  30clear, when it may be put aside,
as a bee

  puts aside color, pattern, flight when he reaches

  at the stigma’s base the pure nectar:

  as I may put writing aside someday to seek to know.

  1978

  Hermit Lark

  Shy lark! I’ll bet it took a while to get you

  perfect, your song quintessential, hermit lark,

  just back from wherever you winter: I learn my real

  and ideal self from you, the right to sing

  5alone without shame!

  water over stone makes useless brook music; your

  music unbearably clear after rain

  drops water breaking through air, the dusk air

  like shaded brookwater, substanced clarity!

  10I learn from you and lose the edginess I speak of

  to one other only, my mate, my long beloved, and

  make a shield not so much against the world,

  though against its hardest usages, as

  for tenderness’s small leeways: how

  15hard to find the bird in the song! the music

  breaks in from any height or depth of the spiral

  and whirling up or down, jamming, where does it

  leave off: shy bird, welcome home, I love your

  _________

  song and keep my distance: hold, as I know you

  20won’t, through the summer this early close visitation

  behind the garage and in the nearby brush:

  you will pair off and hiding find deeper

  shyness yet: be what you must and will be:

  I listen and look to found your like in me.

  1978 (1980)

  Shit List; or, Omnium-Gatherum of Diversity into Unity

  You’ll rejoice at how many kinds of shit there are:

  gosling shit (which J. Williams said something

  was as green as), fish shit (the generality), trout

  shit, rainbow trout shit (for the nice), mullet shit,

  5sand dab shit, casual sloth shit, elephant shit

  (awesome as process or payload), wildebeest shit,

  horse shit (a favorite), caterpillar shit (so many dark

  kinds, neatly pelleted as mint seed), baby rhinoceros

  shit, splashy jaybird shit, mockingbird shit

  10(dive-bombed with the aim of song), robin shit that

  oozes white down lawnchairs or down roots under roosts,

  chicken shit and chicken mite shit, pelican shit, gannet

  shit (wholesome guano), fly shit (periodic), cockatoo

  shit, dog shit (past catalog or assimilation),

  15cricket shit, elk (high plains) shit, and

  tiny scribbled little shrew shit, whale shit (what

  a sight, deep assumption), mandril shit (blazing

  blast off), weasel shit (wiles’ waste), gazelle shit,

  _________

  magpie shit (total protein), tiger shit (too acid

  20to contemplate), moray eel and manta ray shit, eerie

  shark shit, earthworm shit (a soilure), crab shit,

  wolf shit upon the germicidal ice, snake shit, giraffe

  shit that accelerates, secretary bird shit, turtle

  shit suspension invites, remora shit slightly in

  25advance of the shark shit, hornet shit (difficult to

  assess), camel shit that slaps the ghastly dry

  siliceous, frog shit, beetle shit, bat shit (the

  marmoreal), contemptible cat shit, penguin shit,

  hermit crab shit, prairie hen shit, cougar shit, eagle

  30shit (high totem stuff), buffalo shit (hardly less

  lofty), otter shit, beaver shit (from the animal of

  alluvial dreams)—a vast ordure is a broken down

  cloaca—macaw shit, alligator shit (that floats the Nile

  along), louse shit, macaque, koala, and coati shit,

  35antelope shit, chuck-will’s-widow shit, alpaca shit

  (very high stuff), gooney bird shit, chigger shit, bull

  shit (the classic), caribou shit, rasbora, python, and

  razorbill shit, scorpion shit, man shit, laswing

  fly larva shit, chipmunk shit, other-worldly wallaby

  40shit, gopher shit (or broke), platypus shit, aardvark

  shit, spider shit, kangaroo and peccary shit, guanaco

  shit, dolphin shit, aphid shit, baboon shit (that leopards

  induce), albatross shit, red-headed woodpecker (nine

  inches long) shit, tern shit, hedgehog shit, panda shit,

  45seahorse shit, and the shit of the wasteful gallinule.

  1969 (1972)

  Limits

  Since the

  unknown’s

  truer

  than the

  5known

  and since

  mystery

  can

  make a well-known weed

  10unreal

  and since

  bent we

  break on

  time that lets

  15everything endure

  changed

  why not take

  liberties

  and love

  20what is not

  storm the intangible

  for the lore

  song’s lost in

  1959 (1973)

  Sizing

  Some ideas hit

  brush too thick

  to mingle through

  or clearings

  5too wide to bound

  Bride

  for Minfong Ho

  Sometimes a maple seed

  can hold on so

  tight it spins

  way out on the wind strong

  5enough to snap it free!

  1978

  Rainy Morning

  Sometimes the ridge across

  the way transluminous

  emerges above the mist

  and squares and detached rondures

  5of vapory ground with

  dairy barns and old trees

  break out afloat

  separated in high lyings

  The Scour

  It was so windy

  last night the snow

  got down nowhere

  except up against something.

  Meditation

  Spot fires rifle the woods

  and gold and scarlet

  flash hilltop to hill,

  hedgerows and fields waylaid giving

  5way: the sky drops ash

  to cover the gone

  or spent and the long

  build up of white

  takes care of everything.

  Oblivion’s Bloom

  Struck head to

  ground in

  first cold

  the bumblebee

  5turns

  in the sweetest

  nectar yet

  1977

  Immortality

  The double lanceolate

  needlelike

  hemlock leaf

  will, falling, catch on

  5a twitch of old

  worm-silk

  and, like a fall worm,

  dingledangle breezy

  all day in the noose

  1976 (1978)

  Design

  The drop seeps whole

  from boulder-lichen

  or ledge moss and drops,

  joining, to trickle,

  5run, fall, dash,

  sprawl in held deeps,

  to rush shallows, spill

  thin through heights,

  but then, edging,

  10to eddy aside, nothing

  of all but nothing’s

  curl of motion spent.

  1978 (1980)

  Augmentations in Early March

  The grail trees this

  morning are

  ice-corseted to the least

  twig and a breeze,

  5sun-raised,

  squeaks the got-up skeletons

  limb against limb

  with
music frazzled

  multiple as mist

  10settling or as treesful

  of gritty grackles

  on their way here now.

  1980

  Working Differentials

  The mts,

  their pushy

  roundness,

  force

  5streams

  to wind

  but the streams

  to wind less

  take the

  10roundness

  away and

  put it down

  flat

  where they

  15though then

  meander deeply

  as if at

  leisure or in

  spite.

  (1979)

  Winter Sanctuaries

  The squirrel, bunching branches,

  knits a billowing raft

  from twig-ends and, riding air, lifts

  one paw to pull in a tip

  5where maple seeds, shaken, cling.

  Cold Spell

  The sun seeps the evergreens’

  long-wood shade

  off the snow and the cut

  of light deepens into ditchbanks;

  _________

  5hedgerows (gray clatter) trap

  windy heat-holdings, and barns,