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

  giving up her heavy grief, lying

  down beside him, their secret union

  40invisible in the green needles of

  the great pine that branches now

  into their rest, looking where Levi

  Scott, four years old in 1800, went

  down beneath his thin tall slab, may

  45the child keep innocent of treason, and

  on to Crowley Landing on the left

  between river and road, now a campsite

  and picnic ground, where we took

  pictures, wild mullein starring the

  50grounds, a yucca group with dead

  flower-spears off in a clearing, in

  the center a mound of old chimney

  bricks with wasp dust and gold grasses

  and a yard tree, broken off, with

  55slender sprouts nude, swamp cedar

  standing around in clumps like persons

  edging the openings, by the river now

  narrower twists of white birch

  thin-twigged and leafless, and

  60around two curves to Batsto, the

  tower of the mansion house first seen,

  like the towers of shore women gazing

  the sea’s return, a confluence of

  roads and streams, the bog-iron works

  65and Revolutionary cannon balls, iron

  hearths and iron oxen-shoes, seeing

  a nail made and headed from nail rod,

  the company store, and men from

  Trenton writing the place up for the

  70Sunday paper, wasps drunk with fall

  warmth, a beautiful November noon by

  the grist mill and the meal-honed

  wood, the carriage house and small

  seats, the sty with the iron-bowled

  75furnace for scalding, on the third

  floor of the mansion a strict stairway

  to the slaves’ underground railroad,

  and

  weakening to the presence of a foreign

  80past and to the keeping of old things,

  back home by Route 30 and the White

  Horse Pike, by the farmers’ stands,

  Naval Air Base and to the sea’s edge.

  1957 (1961)

  Mansion

  So it came time

  for me to cede myself

  and I chose

  the wind

  5to be delivered to

  The wind was glad

  and said it needed all

  the body

  it could get

  10to show its motions with

  and wanted to know

  willingly as I hoped it would

  if it could do

  something in return

  15to show its gratitude

  When the tree of my bones

  rises from the skin I said

  come and whirlwinding

  stroll my dust

  20around the plain

  so I can see

  how the ocotillo does

  and how saguaro-wren is

  and when you fall

  25with evening

  fall with me here

  where we can watch

  the closing up of day

  and think how morning breaks

  1959 (1960)

  Close-Up

  Are all these stones

  yours

  I said

  and the mountain

  5pleased

  but reluctant to

  admit my praise could move it much

  shook a little

  and rained a windrow ring of stones

  10to show

  that it was so

  Stonefelled I got

  up addled with dust

  and shook

  15myself

  without much consequence

  Obviously I said it doesn’t pay

  to get too

  close up to

  20greatness

  and the mountain friendless wept

  and said

  it couldn’t help

  itself

  1958 (1959)

  Mountain Liar

  The mountains said they were

  tired of lying down

  and wanted to know what

  I could do about

  5getting them off the ground

  Well close your eyes I said

  and I’ll see if I can

  by seeing into your nature

  tell where you’ve been wronged

  10What do you think you want to do

  They said Oh fly

  My hands are old

  and crippled keep no lyre

  but if that is your true desire

  15and conforms roughly

  with your nature I said

  I don’t see why

  we shouldn’t try

  to see something along that line

  20Hurry they said and snapped shut

  with rocky sounds their eyes

  I closed mine and sure enough

  the whole range flew

  gliding on interstellar ice

  25They shrieked with joy and peeked

  as if to see below

  but saw me as before there

  foolish without my lyre

  We haven’t budged they said

  30You wood

  (1958)

  Prospecting

  Coming to cottonwoods, an

  orange rockshelf,

  and in the gully

  an edging of stream willows,

  5I made camp

  and turned my mule loose

  to graze in the dark

  evening of the mountain.

  Drowsed over the coals

  10and my loneliness

  like an inner image went

  out and shook

  hands with the willows,

  and running up the black scarp

  15tugged the heavy moon

  up and over into light,

  and on a hill-thorn of sage

  called with the coyotes

  and told ghost stories to

  20a night circle of lizards.

  Tipping on its handle

  the Dipper unobtrusively

  poured out the night.

  At dawn returning, wet

  25to the hips with meetings,

  my loneliness woke me up

  and we merged refreshed into

  the breaking of camp and day.

  1958 (1960)

  Jersey Cedars

  The wind inclines the cedars and lets

  snow riding in

  bow them

  swaying weepers

  5on the hedgerows of

  open fields

  black-green branches stubby fans under snow

  bent spires dipping at the ground

  Oh said the cedars will spring let us rise

  10and I said rain

  will thawing

  unburden you

  and will

  they said

  15we stand again green-cone arrows at the sun

  The forces I said are already set up

  but they splintering in that deep soft day

  could not herd

  their moans

  20into my quiet speech

  and I bent

  over arms

  dangling loose to wind and snow to be

  with them assailing the earth with moans

  1958 (1960)

  Hardweed Path Going

  Every evening, down into the hardweed

  going,

  the slop bucket heavy, held-out, wire handle

  freezing in the hand, put it down a minute, the jerky

  5smooth unspilling levelness of the knees,

  meditation of a bucket rim,

  lest the wheat meal,

  floating on clear greasewater, spill,

  down the grown-up path:

  10don’t forget to slop the hogs,

  feed the chickens, />
  water the mule,

  cut the kindling,

  build the fire,

  15call up the cow:

  supper is over, it’s starting to get

  dark early,

  better get the scraps together, mix a little meal in,

  nothing but swill.

  20The dead-purple woods hover on the west.

  I know those woods.

  Under the tall, ceiling-solid pines, beyond the edge of

  field and brush, where the wild myrtle grows,

  I let my jo-reet loose.

  25A jo-reet is a bird. Nine weeks of summer he

  sat on the well bench in a screened box,

  a stick inside to walk on,

  “jo-reet,” he said, “jo-reet.”

  and I

  30would come up to the well and draw the bucket down

  deep into the cold place where red and white marbled

  clay oozed the purest water, water celebrated

  throughout the county:

  “Grits all gone?”

  35“jo-reet.”

  Throw a dipper of cold water on him. Reddish-black

  flutter.

  “reet, reet, reet!”

  Better turn him loose before

  40cold weather comes on.

  Doom caving in

  inside

  any pleasure, pure

  attachment

  45of love.

  Beyond the wild myrtle away from cats I turned him loose

  and his eye asked me what to do, where to go;

  he hopped around, scratched a little, but looked up at me.

  Don’t look at me. Winter is coming.

  50Disappear in the bushes. I’m tired of you and will

  be alone hereafter. I will go dry in my well.

  I will turn still.

  Go south. Grits is not available in any natural form.

  Look under leaves, try mushy logs, the floors of pinywoods.

  55South into the dominion of bugs.

  They’re good woods.

  But lay me out if a mourning dove far off in the dusky pines

  starts.

  Down the hardweed path going,

  60leaning, balancing, away from the bucket, to

  Sparkle, my favorite hog, sparse, fine black hair,

  grunted while feeding if rubbed,

  scratched against the hair, or if talked to gently:

  got the bottom of the slop bucket:

  65“Sparkle . . .

  You hungry?

  Hungry, girly?”

  blowing, bubbling in the trough.

  Waiting for the first freeze:

  70“Think it’s going to freeze tonight?” say the neighbors,

  the neighbors, going by.

  Hog-killing.

  Oh, Sparkle, when the axe tomorrow morning falls

  and the rush is made to open your throat,

  75I will sing, watching dry-eyed as a man, sing my

  love for you in the tender feedings.

  She’s nothing but a hog, boy.

  Bleed out, Sparkle, the moon-chilled bleaches

  of your body hanging upside-down

  80hardening through the mind and night of the first freeze.

  1958 (1960)

  Bourn

  When I got past relevance

  the singing shores

  told me to turn back

  but I took the outward gray

  5to be

  some meaning of foreign light

  trying to get through and

  when I looked back I saw

  the shores were dancing

  10willows of grief and

  from willows it was not far to

  look back on waves

  So I came to

  the decimal of being,

  15entered and was gone

  What light there

  no tongue turns to tell

  to willow and calling shore

  though willows weep and shores sing always

  1958 (1960)

  Grassy Sound

  It occurred to me there are no

  sharp corners

  in the wind

  and I was very glad to think

  5I had so close

  a neighbor

  to my thoughts but decided to

  sleep before

  inquiring

  10The next morning I got up early

  and after yesterday had come

  clear again went

  down to the salt marshes

  to talk with

  15the straight wind there

  I have observed I said

  your formlessness

  and am

  enchanted to know how

  20you manage loose to be

  so influential

  The wind came as grassy sound

  and between its

  grassy teeth

  25spoke words said with grass

  and read itself

  on tidal creeks as on

  the screens of oscilloscopes

  A heron opposing

  30it rose wing to wind

  turned and glided to another creek

  so I named a body of water

  Grassy Sound

  and came home dissatisfied there

  35had been no

  direct reply

  but rubbed with my soul an

  apple to eat

  till it shone

  1958 (1959)

  Silver

  I thought Silver must have snaked logs

  when young:

  she couldn’t stand to have the line brush her lower hind leg:

  in blinded halter she couldn’t tell what had loosened behind her

  5and was coming

  as downhill

  to rush into her crippling her to the ground:

  and when she almost went to sleep, me dreaming at the slow plow,

  I would

  10at dream’s end turning over the mind to a new chapter

  let the line drop and touch her leg

  and she would

  bring the plow out of the ground with speed but wisely

  fall soon again into the slow requirements of our dreams:

  15how we turned at the ends of rows without sense to new furrows

  and went back

  flicked by

  cornblades and hearing the circling in

  the cornblades of horseflies in pursuit:

  20I hitch up early, the raw spot on Silver’s shoulder

  sore to the collar,

  get a wrench and change the plow’s bull-tongue for a sweep,

  and go out, wrench in my hip pocket for later adjustments,

  down the ditch-path

  25by the white-bloomed briars, wet crabgrass, cattails,

  and rusting ferns,

  riding the plow handles down,

  keeping the sweep’s point from the ground,

  the smooth bar under the plow gliding,

  30the traces loose, the raw spot wearing its soreness out

  in the gentle movement to the fields:

  when snake-bitten in the spring pasture grass

  Silver came up to the gate and stood head-down enchanted

  in her fate

  35I found her sorrowful eyes by accident and knew:

  nevertheless the doctor could not keep her from all

  the consequences, rolls in the sand, the blank extension

  of limbs,

  head thrown back in the dust,

  40useless unfocusing eyes, belly swollen

  wide as I was tall

  and I went out in the night and saw her in the solitude

  of her wildness:

  but she lived and one day half got up

  45and looking round at the sober world took me back

  into her eyes

  and then got up and walked and plowed again;

  mornings her swollen snake-bitten leg wept bright as dew

  and dried to streaks o
f salt leaked white from the hair.

  1958 (1960)

  Concentrations

  I.

  By the ocean

  dawn is

  more itself,

  nets hung like

  5mist on

  pole-racks or

  spread out for mending, weed-picking, corking—

  landreefs of gray

  waves

  10between the poles:

  and the gray

  boats, turtle-nosed,

  beached, out

  of element, waiting,

  15salt-bleached,

  keels, hauled

  across the sand,

  ground to

  wood-ghosts,

  20sand-ghost gray:

  and if there

  is fog,

  dawn, becoming itself as reeds, dunes, sheds,

  transfuses it,

  25opening

  dune-rose-wise

  petal by petal—wave, net, boat, oar, thole:

  II.

  under the reedthatched or pineboughed sheds

  dawn men,

  30opening gray eyes to gray light,

  yawn out of the silver nets of dreams

  and harden as entities,

  their minds hardening the entities they seek:

  III.

  how you catch a fish, slime-quick

  35with dart and turn,