Cen Poems

 

ca A. R. AMMONS

 
 

| ra
en Poems
|
A. R. AMMONS
NA WAYS — “i
CONTENTS
Page
Se 4
PROSPECTING oo 5
JERSEY CEDARS 0 6
| ee 7
| PANT tb es 8
“ CANIUy Fb es 9
Cami 6 11
| PMI 10) 14
| PANO fo. 15
| CANO To ie a 16

 
When snake-bitten in the spring pasture grass
Silver came up to the gate and stood head-down enchanted

oe: in her fate
Silver , I found her sorrowful eyes by accident and knew
Nevertheless the doctor could not keep her from all
I thought Silver must have snaked logs , the consequences, rolls in the sand, the blank extension
when young | 7 of limbs,
She couldn’t stand to have the line brush her lower hind leg | head thrown back in the dust,
In blinded halter she couldn’t tell what had loosened behind her i useless 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

and was coming

as downhill
to rush into her crippling her to the ground

But she lived and one day half got up
and 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 of salt leaked white from the hair

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

I would

at 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 Pr ospecting
How we turned at the ends of rows without sense to new furrows
and went back Coming to cottonwoods, an
flicked by orange rockshelf,

cornblades and hearing the circling in and in the gully

the cornblades of horseflies in pursuit an edging of stream willows,
I made camp
I hitch up early, the raw spot on Silver’s shoulder and turned my mule loose

sore to the collar, | to graze in the dark
get a wrench and change the plow’s bull-tongue for a sweep, _ evening of the mountain.

and go out, wrench in my hip pocket for later adjustments,
down the ditch-path
by the white-bloomed briars, wet crabgrass, cattails,
and rusting ferns, 4
riding the plow handles down,
keeping the sweep’s point from the ground,

Drowzed over the coals
and my loneliness

like an inner image went
out and shook

hands with the willows,

the smooth bar under the plow gliding, iy and running up the black scarp
the traces loose, the raw spot wearing its soreness out tugged the heavy moon
in the gentle movement to the fields up and over into light,

 
ap a a ” . si — - _ ~ ——E ee ——————— -
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and on a hill-thorn of sage but they splintering in that deep soft day

| called with the coyotes could not herd

and told ghost stories to their moans

| a night-circle of lizards. into my quiet speech

} Tipping on its handle and I bent

| the Dipper unobtrusively ¢ over arms

i poured out the night. | dangling loose to wind and snow to be

H | with them assailing the earth with moans

I

} At dawn returning, wet

i to the hips with meetings,
| my loneliness woke me up

 

and we merged refreshed into
the breaking of camp and day. Bourn
When I got past relevance
the singing shores
told me to turn back
Jersey Cedars ae took the outward gray

to be

The wind inclines the cedars and lets | some meaning of foreign light

snow riding in

bow them trying to get through and

swaying weepers | when I looked back I saw
on the hedgerows of the shores were dancing
open fields :

willows of grief and

black-green branches stubby fans under snow from willows it was not far to

bent spires dipping at the ground look back on waves

Oh said the cedars will spring let us rise is ene ine

“ge ' wee: eh entered and was gone

will thawing

~
Hamar What light there
Whey ec no tongue turns to tell
y r to willow and calling shore
we stand again green-cone arrows at the sun
The forces I said are already set up though willows weep and shores sing always

 
Stal ans RA 8 PNP IERETE GAD EB 27 sg GIES OO aD OR RR ae a A RRL ACIS CN OSE

Canto I: Canto 7:

   

ee Coe B at been es ne remain material: here are some pretty things picked for you:
when you arrive - 1) dry thunder
you have gone too far: a rustling like water
at the Source you are in the mouth of Death: { down the sky’s eaves
. is summer locust
you cannot in dogfennel weed

turn around in
the Absolute: there are no entrances or exits
no precipitations of forms
to use like tongs against the formless:
no freedom to choose: inaugurates

2) the fieldwild
yellow daisy
focusing dawn

the cosmos

to be
3) the universe comes

to bear
on a willow-slip; and
you cannot unwind

a pebble
from its constellations

you have to stop not-being and break
off from is to flowing and
this 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:
4) chill frog-gibber
from grass

or loose stone
is

the wind that is my guide said this: it

should know having
given up everything to eternal being but

direction: :
crucial as fieldwild

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

from one foot to the other:
wisdom wisdom: such propositions!

to be glad and sad at once is also unity each thing boundless in its effect,

and death: eternal in the working out

wisdom wisdom: a peachblossom blooms on a particular 4 of its effect: each brush

+

tree on a particular day: of beetle-bristle against a twig

unity cannot do anything in particular: ' and the whole
' shifts, compensates, realigns:
are these the thoughts you want me to think I said but the crawl of a slug
the wind was gone and there was no more knowledge then on the sea’s floor

 
 

quivers the moon to a new dimension: | dry thunder in the locust weed!

bright philosophy, the supple willow-slip leafless in winter!
shake us all! here on the , | the chill gibber of the frog |
bottom of an ocean of space ea stilled in nightsnake’s foraging thrust!
we babble words recorded how ridiculous! ,
in waves A : grim: :
of sound that 4 enchanting:
cannot fully disappear,
washing up . repeating mid night these songs for these divisions

like fossils on the shores
of unknown worlds:

nevertheless, taking our identities,
we accept destruction:

a tree, committed as a tree,

cannot in a flood | Canto 8:
turn fish,
sprout gills (leaves are ) every evening, down into the hardweed
a tree’s gills) and fins: : going,
the molluscs } ! the slop bucket, heavy, held-out, wire handle
dug out of mountain peaks — ! , freezing in the hand, put it down a minute, the jerky
are all dead: smooth, unspilling levelness of the knees,
meditation of a bucket rim,
Oh I will be addled and easy and move ' lest the wheat meal,
over this prairie in the winds keep, , floating on clear greasewater, spill,
long-lying sierras blue-low in the distance: down the grown-up path:
I will glide and say little
(what would you have me say? I know nothing; , don’t forget to slop the hogs,
still, I cannot help singing) , feed the chickens,
and after much grace water the mule,
I will pause cut the kindling,
and break cactus water for your lips: build the fire,
| , call up the cow:
identity’s strict confinement! a risk : 1
and possibility, \ supper is over, it’s starting to get
granted by mercy: | | dark early,
in your death is the mercy of your granted life: : better get the scraps together, mix a little meal in,

do not quibble: | nothing but swill.

 

10 . 1
 

They’re good woods.
But lay me out if a mourning-dove far off in the dusky pines
starts.

The 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.
A 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

Down the hardweed path going,
leaning, 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:

would come up to the well and draw the bucket down “Sparkle...”

deep into the cold place where red and white marbled “grunt, grunt...”

clay oozed the purest water, water celebrated “You hungry?”

throughout the county: “grunt, grunt . . |
“Grits all gone?” “Hungry, girly?”
‘‘Jo-reet.” “grunt, grunt, grunt...”

Throw a dipper of cold water on him. Reddish-black blowing, bubbling in the trough.

flutter. Wi
Waiting for the first freeze:

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

‘Reet, reet, reet!”’

Better turn him loose before
cold weather comes on.

Doom caving in sinh Ioan

ms Oh, Sparkle, when the axe tomorrow morning falls
saws eG Ber and the rush is made to open your throat,
ee ae I will sing, watching dry-eyed as a man, sing my

love for you in the tender feedings.

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.
Disappear 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.
South into the dominion of bugs.

She’s nothing but a hog, boy.

Bleed out, Sparkle, the moon-chilled bleaches
of your body hanging upside-down
hardening through the mind and night of the first freeze.

12 13

 

 

 
Canto 12:

the soul is a region without definite boundaries: a tea-garden shows you how:

it is not certain a prairie
can exhaust it
or a range enclose it:
it floats (self-adjusting) like the continental mass,
where it towers most
extending its deepest mantling base
(exactly proportional):
does not flow all one way: there is a divide:
river systems thrown like winter tree-shadows
against the hills: branches, runs, high lakes:
stagnant lily-marshes:

you sit in rhododendron shade

at table
on a pavilion-like lawn

the 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

in the glass
and vanish in the widening sight except for an uncertain
is variable, has weather: floods unbalancing
gut it, silt altering the
distribution of weight, the nature of content:
whirlwinds move through it
or stand spinning like separate orders: the moon comes:
there are barren spots: bogs, rising
by self-attrition from themselves, a growth into
destruction of growth,
change of character,
invasion of peat by poplar and oak: semi-precious
stones and precious metals drop from muddy water into mud:

gauze memory of wings

and as you sip from the small thick cup
held bird-warm
in the hands

you watch
the people
rising on the bridge

descend into the pond,
where bridge and mirrorbridge merge

it is an area of poise, really, held from tipping, at the bank :
dark wild water, fierce eels, countercurrents: returning their images to themselves:
a grove

a habitat, precise ecology, of forms

mutually to some extent
tolerable, not entirely self-destroying: a crust afloat:

a scum, foam to the deep and other-natured:
but deeper than depth, too: a vacancy and swirl:

of pepper trees (sgraffito)
screens 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
toward the peak no one reaches live
but where ascension
and descension meet

it may be spherical; light and knowledge merely
the iris and opening

to the dark methods of its sight: how it comes and
goes, ruptures and heals,

whirls and stands still: the moon comes: terrain:

15

 
completing the idea of a bridge 27 March

  
    
   
  
 
 
    
  

think where the body is,
that going too deep

the forsythia is out,
sprawling like
yellow amoebae, the long
uneven branches—pseudo-
podia—
angling on the bottom
of a pool of spring-clear wind:

it may lose touch,

wander a ghost in hell

sing irretrievably in gloom,
and think

how the spirit silvery with vision may

break loose in high wind shall I

go down
to the deep river, to the moonwaters,

where the silver
willows are and the bay blossoms,

and go off weightless

body never to rise or spirit fall again to unity,
to lovers strolling through pepper-tree shade:

paradise was when

ree to the songs
i df le oe of dark birds,
ric oarupeohit wih ss is aad 9 to the great wooded silence
came out onto the soft, green, level earth i
of flowing

into the natural light, come, sweat, bloodblessings, forever down the dark river

and a ee Car silvered at the moon-singing of hidden birds:

Canto 17:

I shall
go down

to the deep river, to the moonwaters,
where the silver

willows are and the bay blossoms,

to the songs
of dark birds,
to the great wooded silence
of flowing
forever down the dark river

silvered at the moon-singing of hidden birds:

16

 

 

 
 

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