OMMATEUM A. R. Ammons
Contemporary Poets of Dorrance (472)OMMATEUMOMMATEUM
OMMATEUMWITH DOXOLOGY
by
A. R. AMMONS
DORRANCE & COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
COPYRIGHT 1065
A. R. AMMONS
Libra, of Con,. Caraloam° Card Number 66.7693
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES AMERICA
To
Josephine Miles
FOREWORD
These poems are, for the most part, dramatic pre¬sentations of thought and emotion, as in themes of the fear of the loss of identity, the appreciation of transient natural beauty, the conflict between the individual and the group, the chaotic particle in the classical field, the creation of false gods to serve real human needs. While maintaining a perspective from the hub, the poet ventures out in each poem to explore one of the numberless radii of experience. The poems suggest a manysided view of reality; an adoption of tentative, provisional attitudes, replacing the partial, unified, prejudicial, and rigid; a belief that forms of thought, like physical forms, are, in to far as they resist it, susceptible to change, increasingly costly and violent.
In manner the poems are terse and evocative. They suggest and imply and rather grow in the reader's mind than exhaust themselves in completed, external form. The imagery is generally functional beyond pictoral evocation of mood, as plateau, for example, may suggest a flat, human existence, devoid of the drama of rising and falling.
These poems, then, mean to enrich the experience of being; of being anterior to action, that shapes action; of being anterior to wider, richer being.
1
So I said I am Ezra
and the wind whipped my throat
gaming for the sounds of my voice
I listened to the wind
go over my head and up into the night Turning to the sea I said
I am Ezra
but there were no echoes from the waves
The words were swallowed up in the voice of the surf or leaping over the swells lost themselves oceanward Over the bleached and broken fields
I moved my feet and turning from the wind that ripped sheets of sand
from the beach and threw them
like seamists across the dunes
swayed as if the wind were taking me away
and said
I am Ezra
As a word too much repeated falls out of being
so I Ezra went out into the night
like a drift of sand,
and splashed among the windy oats)
that clutch the dunes
of unremembered seas
[7]
2
The sap is gone out of the trees
in the land of my birth
and the branches droop
The rye is rusty in the fields
and the oatgrains are light in the wind The combine sucks at the fields
and coughs out dry mottled straw
The bags of grain are chaffy and light
The oatfields said Oh
and Oh said the wheatfields as the dusting combine passed over
and long after the dust was gone Oh they said
and looked around at the stubble and straw The sap is gone out of the hollow straws
and the marrow out of my bones
They are
brittle and dry
and painful in this land
The wind whipped at my carcass saying How shall I
coming from these fields
water the fields of earth
and I said Oh
and fell down in the dust
[8]
3
In Strasbourg in 1349
in the summer and in the whole year there went a plague through the earth Death walked on both sides of the Sea tasting Christian and Saracen flesh
and took another turn about the Sea
In a black gown and scarlet cape she went skipping across the Sea
freeing ships to rear and fly in the wind with their cargoes of dead
Vultures whipped amorous wings in the shadow of death
and death was happy with them and flew swiftly whirling a lyrical dance on hidden feet
Dogs ate their masters' empty hands and death going wild with joy hurried about the Sea
and up the rivers to the mountains
The dying said
Damn us
the Jews have poisoned the wells
and death throwing her head about lifted the skirts of her gown
and danced wildly
The rich Jews are burning in 1349 on loose platforms
and death jumps into the fire
[ 9]
setting the flames wild with her dancing
So I left and walked up into the air and sat down in a cool draft
my face hot from watching the fire When morning came
I looked down at the ashes
and rose and walked out of the world
[ 10 ]
4
I broke a sheaf of light
from a sunbeam
that was slipping through thunderheads drawing a last vintage from the hills
O golden sheaf I said
and throwing it on my shoulder brought it home to the corner 0 very pretty light I said and went out to my chores
The cow lowed from the pasture and I answered yes I am late
already the evening star
The pigs heard me coming and squealed
From the stables a neigh reminded me
yes I am late having forgot
I have been out to the sunbeam and broken a sheaf of gold
Returning to my corner
I sat by the fire with the sheaf of light
that shone through the night
and was hardly gone when morning came
[ 11 ]
5
Some months ago I went out early
to pay
my last respects to earth
farewell earth
ocean farewell
lean eucalyptus with nude gray skin
farewell
Hill rain
pouring from a rockpierced cloud hill rain from the wounds of mist farewell
See the mountainpeaks gather
clouds from the sky
shake new bright flakes from the mist farewell
Hedgerows hung with web and dew
that disappear at a touch like snail eyes
farewell
To a bird only this
farewell
and he hopped away to peck dew
from a ground web
spider running out of her tunnel to see to whom I said
farewell
[ 12 ]
and she sat still on her heavy webs
I dosed up all the natural throats of earth and cut my ties with every natural heart and saying farewell
stepped out into the great open
[ 13]
6
I went out to the sun
where it burned over a desert willow
and getting under the shade of the willow I said
Its very hot in this country
The sun said nothing so I said
The moon has been talking about you and he said
Well what is it this time
She says it's her own light
He threw his flames out so far
they almost scorched the top of the willow
Well I said of course I don't know
The sun went on and the willow was glad I found an arroyo and dug for water which I got muddy and then clear
so I drank a lot
and washed the salt from my eyes and taking off my shirt
hung it on the willow to dry and said This land where whirlwinds
walking at noon in tall columns of dust take stately turns about the desert is a very dry land
So I went to sleep under the willow tree
When the moon came up it was cold and reaching to the willow for my shirt I said to the moon
You make it a pretty night
[ 14 ]
so she smiled
A nightlizard rattled stems behind me and the moon said
I see over the mountain
the sun is angry
Not able to see him I called and said Why are you angry with the moon since all at last must be lost
to the great vacuity
The Heaton Review
[15]
7
At dawn in 1098
the Turks went out from the gates
of Antioch
and gathered their dead
from the banks of the river
the cool ones
they gathered in
Bathing in the morning river I to the reapers
and stepping out gave
my white form to morning She blushed openly
so twisting I danced
along the banks of the river
and morning rushed up over the hills to see my wild form
whirling on the banks of the river Saying 0 morning
I went away to the hills
With cloaks
and ornaments
arrows and coins of gold
the Turks buried their dead
and sealed the tombs with tears
But the Christians rising from the fields broke open the cool tombs
and cut off heads
[ 16 ]
for a tally
Taking morning in my arms I said Oh
and descended the eastern hills and all that day
it was night in Antioch
[ 17 ]
8
The whaleboat struck and we came ashore to the painted faces 0 primitives I said and the arrow sang to my throat
Leaving myself on the shore
I went away
and when a heavy wind caught me I said
My body lies south
given over to vultures and flies
and wrung my hands so the wind went on Another day a wind came saying
Bones
lovely and white
lie on the southern sand
the ocean has washed bright
I said
O bones in the sun and went south
The flies were gone
The vultures no longer searched
the ends of my hingeless bones
for a trace of lean or gristle
Breathing the clean air I picked up a rib
to draw figures in the sand
till there is no roar in the ocean
no green in the sea
till the northwind flings no waves
across the open sea
I running in and out with the waves
I singing old Devonshire airs
The Hudson Review
[ 18 ]
9
Turning a moment to say so long
to the spoken
and seen
I stepped into
the implicit pausing sometimes
on the way to listen to unsaid things
At a boundary of mind Oh I said brushing up against the unseen and whirling on my heel
said
I have overheard too much
Peeling off my being I plunged into
the well
The fingers of the water splashed
to grasp me up but finding only a few shafts
of light
too quick to grasp became hysterical jumped up and down and wept copiously
So I said I'm sorry dear well but
went on deeper
finding patched innertubes beer cam and black roothairs along the way
but went on deeper
till darkness snuffed the shafts of light
against the well's side
night kissing
the last bubbles from my lips
[ 19 ]
10
Turning from the waterhole I said Oh to the lioness whose wrinkled forehead showed signs of wonder
O beautiful relaxed animal I said
The tall grass shivered up and down and said
What a looseness is in her body how limp are the wet teats of her belly
The grass sang a song I had never
heard before to the red sun
so I said cool evening with a wind in the rushes
The lioness dropped loosely to the ground and I said 0 tired lioness
you love the evening
She came to my chest and we fell into the waterhole
to which
since the grass had stopped singing and was watching the sun sink
I said
water is like love in tranquillity
my soul has wings of light and
never have I seen
more beauty
than is in this evening
Her paw touched my lips as if
she loved me passionate and loud so I said
Loose lioness
[ 20 ]
and her lips took the words from my throat her warm tongue flicking the living flutter of my being
So I fumbled about in the darkness for my wings and the grass looked all around at the evening
[ 21 ]
11
Dying in a mirthful place
I looked around at the dim lights the hips and laughing throats
and the motions of the dance
and the wine the lovely wine
and turning to death said
I thought you knew propriety Death was embarrassed and stuttered so I watched the lips
and hurried away to a hill in Arizona where in the soil was such a noiseless mirth and death
that I lay down and placed my head by a great boulder
The next morning I was dead excepting a few peripheral cells and the buzzards
waiting for a savoring age to come
sat over me in mournful conversations that sounded excellent to my eternal ear
[22 ]
12
When Rahman rides a dead haste in a dusty wind
I wait for him and look for him coming over the desert blustering through the tough unwaving leaves
and trembling behind a tall saguaro say 0 Rahman
and he says
what what
It's like this
what what
to when I saw you coming I thought perhaps There was the rush of dust and then farther on a spiral whirlwinding
as if he had stopped too late and drawing up his wings looked back at the saguaro's lifted arms Unspiralling
he swept on across the desert
leaving me the ocotilla in a bloomless month
[ 23 ]
13
With ropes of hemp
I lashed my body to the great oak
saying odes for the fiber of the oakbark and the oakwood saying supplications to the root mesh
deep and reticular in the full earth through the night saying these
and early into the wild unusual dawn chanting hysterical though quiet watching the ropes ravel
and the body go raw
while eternity
greater than the ravelings of a rope waited with me patient in my experiment Oh I said listening to the raucous
words of the nightclouds
how shadowy is the soul
how fleet with the wildness of wings
Under the grip of my bonds
I say Oh and melt beyond the ruthless coil but return again saying odes in the night where I stand splintered to the oak gathering the dissentient ghosts of my spirit into the oakheart
I in the night standing saying oaksongs entertaining my soul to me
[24]
14
My dice are crystal inlaid with gold and possess
spatial symmetry
about their centers and mechanical symmetry and
are of uniform density and all surfaces have equal coefficients of friction for
my dice are not loaded Thy will be done
whether dog or Aphrodite
Cleaning off a place on the ground I patted ft
flat and
sat back on my legs
rattling the bones Apparitionally god sat poker-faced silent on the other side
When the ballooning
silence burst I cast
and coming to rest
the dice spoke their hard directive and melting
left gold bits on the soil
[ 25 ]
16
Coming to Sumer and the tamarisks on the river I Ezra with unsettling love
rifled the mud and wattle huts
for recent mournings
with gold leaves
and lapis lazuli beads
in the neat braids loosening from the skull Looking through the wattles to the sun I said
It has rained some here in this place unless snow falls heavily in the hills to do this
The floor was smooth with silt and river weeds hanging gray
on the bent reeds spoke saying Everything is even here as you can see Firing the huts
I abandoned the unprofitable poor, --unequal even in the bone...
todisrespect,
and casual with certainty
watched an eagle wing as I went m king and priest
[26]
17
I assume the world is curious about me
the sound
and volume of hell
where brittle grace polished as glass glazed in fire glints
and pliant humility
furls coiling into itself
like an ashen abnegation
for sin
you will want to see it
even without god is a hot consumption
I assume that when I die
going over and under without care
leaves will wilt and lose all windy interest some ration of stars will fall
for my memorial
A simple thrust brings vomit
but a reduction
and retained separation has love in it and love burns on itself
while hate
is a cold expulsion and devastation
I assume many will crowd around me to praise my unwillingness to simplify then turning
assist in raising me to my outstanding tree someday unhang my sinews from the nails let down the gray locust from the pine
[27]
15
Having been interstellar and in the treble clef
by great expense of
climbing mountains lighting crucible fires in the catacombs
among the hunted
and the trapped in tiers seeking the distillate answering direct
the draft of earthless air
he turned in himself helplessly as in sleep
and went out into the growth of rains and when the rains
taking him
had gone away in spring
no one knew
that he had ever flown
he was no less
no more known
to stones he left a stone
[28]
I struck a diminished seventh and sat down
to wait
for the universal word Come word
I said
azalea word
gel precipitate
while I
the primitive spindle
binding the poles of earth and air
give you
with river ease
a superior appreciation
equalling winged belief
It had almost come
I perishing for deity stood up drying my feet
when the minor challenge was ignored and death came over sieving me
[29]
19
Gilgamesh was very lascivious
and took the virgins as they ripened from the men that wanted them
To the men Gilgamesh gave wall building brick burning and gleaning of straw
for a physical expression
yielding more protection
for the virgins the men wanted than long hours in jogging beds with the walls crumbling before who knew what predators
seeking wine
virgins
long fields of wheat
and spearshafts wrapped in gold
Because he sought the mate of his physical divinity
Gilgamesh
let many usurp the missing one and went
singly in his tragic excellence
At his going by
the men in mud and sweat
saw virgins yielding to his eyes and turned to work with dreams
[30]
no virgin would ever give to them
Climbing the wall
and walking up and down upon it I said
Fools fools
but they kneaded slowly
the muscles of their glassy backs
worms working in the sun
[31 ]
20
When I set fire to the reed patch that autumn evening
the wind whipped volleys of shot from the bursting joints
and armies bristling defensive interest rushed up over the fringing hills
and stared into the fire
I laughed my self to death and they
legs afire
eyelashes singed
swept in flooding up the lovely expressions of popping light and hissing thorns of flame
Clashing midfire
the armies quite unwound
the intentions of the fire
and snuffed the black reeds smoking out but like destroyed mountains
left deposits
that will insure
deep mulch for next year's shoots the greenest hope
autumn ever
left this patch of reeds
[32]
21
The grass miracles have kept me down all autumn purpose turning on me like an inward division
The grasses heading barbed tufts
airy panicles and purple spikes
have kept me stalled in the deadends of branching dreams
It is as though I had started up the trunk and then dispersed like ant trails
along the branches
and out on the twigs
and paused dipping with a golden thought at the points of the leaves
A black stump hidden
in grass and old mellon vines has reined my hurry
and I have gone up separately jiggling like a bubble flock in globes of time
I have not been industrious this autumn It has seemed necessary
to accomplish everything with a pause bending to part the grass
to what round fruit
becoming entangled in clusters
tying all the future up
in variations on present miracles
[33]
22
I came in a dark woods upon
an ineffaceable difference and oops embracing it felt it up and down mindfully
in the dark
prying open the knees to my ideas
It was slim and hard with a sharp point
and stood up
its shaft shot deep as a pile
Who will extract I said desiring a public value this erect
difference from the ground and the dryads
shifting in the limbs
dipped leaves
blotting the angels' roofeyes out
Taking the neck below the barbs
I eased the wet shaft up into my hands Everything retired
The dryads took body in the oakhearts The angels shuttered their wintry peepholes and flew off throneward across the fields and the trees arms-up leaned as in wind away and casting the difference
I splintered
the whole environment
and somewhat dazed with grief ran catching it up hot in my hands and hurled it far into the seas
a brother to Excalibur
[34]
23
A treeful of cleavage flared branching through my flesh and cagey
I sat down mid-desert
and heaping hugged up between my knees an altarcone from the sand
and addressed it with water dreams
The wind
chantless of rain in the open place spun a sifting hum
in slow circles round my sphere of grief and the sun
inched countless arms
under the periphery of my disc of sight eager for the golden thing
There must be time I said to dream real these dreams and the sun
startled by the sound of time said Oh
and whirling in his arms ran off across the sky
Heaping the sand
sharpening the cone of my god I said
I have oracles to seek
Drop leaf shade
the wet cuticle of the leaf tipped in shade yielded belief
to the fixed will and there
[ 35 ]
where the wind like wisdom
sweeps dean the lust prints of the sun lie my bones entombed
with the dull mound of my god
in bliss
[36]
24
Behind the I
I is
an I
elated
leaves
into
separables
Falling too through scopes of
in the
I-beam is some
for the moment accidental mote Behind the I
I discloses
flows
winds and seas
of particles
while he conceived outside is whole
beyond realities
I never wants to lose
[37]
25
One composing seminal works sat oblivious by a brothel
and gave leaflets to the functions of the wind saying
Time is a liquid orb where we swim loose
timeless in a total time
pursuing among the nuclear sediment the sweet pale flakes of old events
Stopping I watched the leaflets rock upward from the windy alley
and brought him a mug of stout The contemporary he mid
turning into the brothel
is an orb's shell
of light
within the liquid orb
and fertility came into him like a virtuoso
and mounting pubic realms
he rode galloping through the night sweetsap and rain playing marbles on the wind's speed of his outstretched shirt
One
weeping beads of ice
down the cold deserts of his brain cried from the street 0 Jezebel
and the seminal one rose wiping saying
In exhaustion's death are dregs of wanted sleep
[ 38 ]
26
In the wind my rescue is
in whorls of it
like winged tufts of dreams bearing
through the forms of nothingness the gyres and hurricane eyes
the seed safety
of multiple origins
I set it my task
to gather the stones of earth
into one place
the water modeled sand molded stones from
the water images
of riverbeds in drought
from the boundaries of the mind from
sloping farms
and altitudes of ice and
to mount upon the highest stone a cardinal
chilled in the attitude of song
But the wind has sown loose dreams in my eyes
and telling unknown tongues drawn me out beyond the land's end and rising in long
parabolas of bliss
born me safety
from all those ungathered stones
[ 39 ]
27
I should have stayed longer idle
and done reverence
to it
waterfalls
humbling in silent slide the precipice of my effrontery
poured libations of arms like waterwheels
toward the ground but
knowing the fate of sunset things
I grew desperate and entertained it with sudden sprints somersaults
and cartwheels figuring eight
It would not stay
Ring of cloud I said
high pale ringcloud
ellipsis of evening moment's miracle where will I go looking for your return and rushing to the rim
I looked down into the deep dissolution
I should have held still before it
and been mute
cancelled by an oak's trunk and done honors unseen
and taken the beauty sparingly as one who fears to move and shatter vision from his eyes
[40]
28
A crippled angel bent M a scythe of grief mourned in an empty lot
Passing by I stopped
amused that immortality should grieve and said
It must be exquisite
Smoke came out of the angel's ears the axles
of slow handwheels of grief and under the white lids of its eyes bulged tears of purple light
Watching the agony diffuse in
shapeless loss
I interposed a harp
The atmosphere possessed it eagerly and the angel
saying prayers for the things of time
let its fingers drop and burn
the lyric strings provoking wonder
Grief sounded like an ocean rose
in bright clothes
and the fire
breaking out on the limbs rising caught up the branching wings in a flurry of ascent
Taking a bow I shot transfixing the angel midair
all miracle hanging fire
on rafters of the sky
[ 41 ]
29
Dropping eyelids among the aerial ash I ascending entered the gates of cloud westward where the sliver moon
keeled in sun was setting
and sat down on a silver lining to think my mind splintered with spears of glass and errors of the cold
Below
the gorged god lay on the leveled city and suburban bandaged
and drowsily tolled the reckonless waste The clouds mushrooming rose
and held about his head
like old incense of damp altars
Oh I mid in the mistral of bleached and naked thought
blood like a catalyst is evil's baptismal need before the white rose and benefactions rise
thin curls of hope from cooling lakes of ruin and chiseled stone wins
from the spout of human sacrifice powers of mercy
Darkness pushed the sliver moon
from my silver lining and I arose
the high seed clouds fading
and went back down into the wounds and cries and held up lanterns for the white nurses moving quickly in the dark
[ 42 ]
30
I came upon a plateau
where mesquite roots
crazed the stone
and rains
moved glinting dust
down the crevices
Calling off rings
to a council of peaks
I said
Spare me man's redundancy and putting on bright clothes sat down in the flat orthodoxy
Quivering with courtesy
a snake drew thrust in sines
and circles from his length
rearing coils of warning white Succumbing in the still ecstasy sinuous through white rows of scales I caved in upon eternity
saying this use is colorless
A pious person his heart
looted and burnt
sat under a foundation
a windy cloak clutched round his bones and said
When the razed temple cooled
I went in
and gathered these
relics of holy urns
[ 43]
Behold beneath this cloak
and I looked in
at the dark whirls of dust
The peaks shook to pieces
coughing bouldered laughter
and the make shed himself in ripples across a lake of sand
[44]
DOXOLOGY
Heterodoxy with Ennui
Should I bold in a moment intrude
upon a silence, hold my hands properly, crossed, in a mock eternity,
would someone use my lips for an expiation?
I have heard the silent owl near death
sees wildly with the comprehension of fire; have drunk from those eyes.
Transplanted my soul to the wind, wound my days round the algae of rapid streams, wedded my bones to the throat of flame, spirited.
You have heard it said of old time
the streets shall flow blood, but the streets swept out with the flood
shall be deposited upon sand.
You have this word for a fulfillment.
An unconstrained fluidity prevails, abides; whole notes are rocks
and men thirty-second's, all in descending scales,
unvigiled bastardies of noise: the motion of permanence.
[45]
Marble, pottery, signs endure, support fluency, scrollwork, where violins ornament, fingers, offended with needles of care, articulate poised domes.
This love for the thin and fleet
will race through the water-content of my heavy death.
I die at the vernal equinox and disorder like a kissing bug quaffs my bonds: if I ascend, I shall be congratulatory,
but if they fawn, desire
a season before immortality.
Detain me among the spiral designs
of an ancient amphora: fulfillment
comes before me like spiral designs
on an ancient amphora in which detain me, fixed in rigid speed.
II
Orthodoxy with Achievement
Silent as light in dismal transit through the void, I, evanescent, sibilant among my parts,
fearing the eclipse of a possible glance
and not glancing, shut-eyed, crouch froglike upon my brain,
[46]
hover and keep dark,
fervor opposed by dread,
activity numbed by its mixed result,
till some awaited drop falls upon the mound and chaos perfects the eternity of my silence.
I cannot count the forms,
thrown upon the wheel, delineated, that have risen and returned without accretion; but the spirit drops falling upon wings
and preens the day with its call:
none say where in the silence it sleeps.
Though the sound of my voice
is a firmamental flaw, my self, in the rockheart, in southern oakmoss blown tangled,
its supple pincers snaring
new forks of life, braiding thin limbs of the wateroak on gooseberry hills beside swamps where the raccoon rum and dips his paw in the run-of-the-swamp musky branchwater for darting crawfish
scuttling a mudwake before them; my self, voluble in the dark side of hills
and placid bays, while the sun grows increasing atmosphere to the sea,
correcting the fault of dawn; my self, the drought of unforested plains, the trilobite's voice,
the loquacity of an alien room troubled by a blowfly, requires my entertainment while we learn the vowels of silence.
[47]
III
Paradox with Variety
The temple stands in a rainforest where bones have a quick ending.
Ephemeral as wings in fire
transparent leaves droop in the earth-steam; growth and decay swallow the traces
of recent paths.
I went in. On one side sat the god of creation; on the other, the god of destruction. Hatred held their eyes. Going deeper to the next chamber, I found the god of destruction and the god of creation tangled sen¬sually on the floor; they gnawed and procreated. In the next chamber was majesty: one god sat staring at his golden walls.
I hear an organ playing through the morning rain; it sounds like the memory of quilting women. Between the organ and me, California poppies furl like splotches of conceit
in the light and silent rain.
A robin peeks up from the grass
and rattles a ladybug in his beak.
Mr. Farnham says
life is fearfully complex.
When I was lustful I drew twenty maidens from the Well of Sacrifice
and took them to Cozumel.
The priests of the steep temples
longed to smear my body
with blue ointment.
[48]
We've all died since
and all has been forgotten. Strange people drop pebbles into the Hole of Water:
it is too still.
Should I mistake khaki blood on foreign snow for cherry ices, my mind would freeze;
but Red blood is interesting:
its vessels on the snow
are museums of eternity.
When stone and drought meet in high places,
the hand instructed by thirst
chips grace into solidity and Hellas,
like a broken grape upon marmoreal locks, clarifies eternity. Had I come in the season when sheep nibble windy grasses,
I would have gone out of the earth listening for grasses
and the stippling feet of sheep on sinking rocks.
I like to walk down windowless corridors
and, going with the draft,
feel the boost of perpendicularity,
directional and rigid;
concision of the seraphim, artificial lighting.
Sometimes the price of my content
consumes its purchase
and martyrs cries, echoing my peace,
rise sinuously like smoke out of my ashen soul.
[49]