02-23-2026, 08:06 AM
Guide
By A. R. Ammons
You cannot come to unity and remain material:
in that perception is no perceiver:
when you arrive
you have gone too far:
at 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
to 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
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:
the wind that is my guide said this: it
should 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:
wisdom 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:
unity 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.
Mission
A.R. Ammons
The wind went over
me
saying
Why are you so distressed
Oh I said I
can’t seem to make
anything
round enough to last
But why
the wind
said
should you be so distressed
as if anything here belonged to you
as if anything here were your concern
For Emily Wilson
By A. R. Ammons
Such a long time as the wave idling gathers
lofts and presses forward into the curvature
of the height before one realizes that the
tension completes itself with a fall through air,
disorganization the prelude to the meandering
of another gather and hurl, the necessary:
ah, what can one make to absorb the astonishment:
you should have seen me the merchant at market
this morning: the people ogled me with severe
goggles: maids, buying in manners and measures
beyond themselves, stared into my goods and
then grew horror-eyed: wives still as distant
from day as a carrot from dinner took the
misconnection sagely, a usual patience:
peashells, I said, long silky peashells: cobs,
I said, long cobs: husks and shucks, I said:
one concerned person pointed out that my whole
economy was wrong; yes, I said, but I have
nothing else to sell: and I said to her, won't
you appreciate the silky beds where seeds
have lain: she had not come to that: and
how about this residence all the grains have
left: won't you buy it and think about it:
not for dinner, she said: rinds, I cried,
rinds and peelings: there was some interest
in those, as for a marmalade, but no one willing,
finally, to do the preparations: absurd, one
woman shouted, and then I grew serious: can you
do with that: but she was off before we fully
met: you should have seen me the merchant at
market this morning: will bankruptcy make a
go of it: will the leavings be left only: the
wave turns over and does not rise again, that wave.
Hymn
By A. R. Ammons
I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
and go on out
over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds
where one wants to stop and look
way past all the light diffusions and bombardments
up farther than the loss of sight
into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark
And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth
inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes
trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest
coelenterates
and praying for a nerve cell
with all the soul of my chemical reactions
and going right on down where the eye sees only traces
You are everywhere partial and entire
You are on the inside of everything and on the outside
I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum
has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut
and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark
chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down
and if I find you I must go out deep into your
far resolutions
and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves
Dunes
By A. R. Ammons
Taking root in windy sand
is not an easy
way
to go about
finding a place to stay.
A ditchbank or wood's-edge
has firmer ground.
In a loose world though
something can be started—
a root touch water,
a tip break sand—
Mounds from that can rise
on held mounds,
a gesture of building, keeping,
a trapping
into shape.
Firm ground is not available ground.
By Emily Dickinson
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -
Substantial Planes
By A. R. Ammons
It doesn't
matter
to me
if
poems mean
nothing:
there's no
floor
to the
universe
and yet
one
walks the
floor.
Gravelly Run
By A. R. Ammons
I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:
for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:
the swamp’s slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge:
holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars’ gothic-clustered
spires could make
green religion in winter bones:
so I look and reflect, but the air’s glass
jail seals each thing in its entity:
no use to make any philosophies here:
I see no
god in the holly, hear no song from
the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter
yellow in the pines: the sunlight has never
heard of trees: surrendered self among
unwelcoming forms: stranger,
hoist your burdens, get on down the road.
By A. R. Ammons
You cannot come to unity and remain material:
in that perception is no perceiver:
when you arrive
you have gone too far:
at 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
to 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
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:
the wind that is my guide said this: it
should 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:
wisdom 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:
unity 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.
Mission
A.R. Ammons
The wind went over
me
saying
Why are you so distressed
Oh I said I
can’t seem to make
anything
round enough to last
But why
the wind
said
should you be so distressed
as if anything here belonged to you
as if anything here were your concern
For Emily Wilson
By A. R. Ammons
Such a long time as the wave idling gathers
lofts and presses forward into the curvature
of the height before one realizes that the
tension completes itself with a fall through air,
disorganization the prelude to the meandering
of another gather and hurl, the necessary:
ah, what can one make to absorb the astonishment:
you should have seen me the merchant at market
this morning: the people ogled me with severe
goggles: maids, buying in manners and measures
beyond themselves, stared into my goods and
then grew horror-eyed: wives still as distant
from day as a carrot from dinner took the
misconnection sagely, a usual patience:
peashells, I said, long silky peashells: cobs,
I said, long cobs: husks and shucks, I said:
one concerned person pointed out that my whole
economy was wrong; yes, I said, but I have
nothing else to sell: and I said to her, won't
you appreciate the silky beds where seeds
have lain: she had not come to that: and
how about this residence all the grains have
left: won't you buy it and think about it:
not for dinner, she said: rinds, I cried,
rinds and peelings: there was some interest
in those, as for a marmalade, but no one willing,
finally, to do the preparations: absurd, one
woman shouted, and then I grew serious: can you
do with that: but she was off before we fully
met: you should have seen me the merchant at
market this morning: will bankruptcy make a
go of it: will the leavings be left only: the
wave turns over and does not rise again, that wave.
Hymn
By A. R. Ammons
I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
and go on out
over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds
where one wants to stop and look
way past all the light diffusions and bombardments
up farther than the loss of sight
into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark
And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth
inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes
trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest
coelenterates
and praying for a nerve cell
with all the soul of my chemical reactions
and going right on down where the eye sees only traces
You are everywhere partial and entire
You are on the inside of everything and on the outside
I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum
has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut
and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark
chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down
and if I find you I must go out deep into your
far resolutions
and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves
Dunes
By A. R. Ammons
Taking root in windy sand
is not an easy
way
to go about
finding a place to stay.
A ditchbank or wood's-edge
has firmer ground.
In a loose world though
something can be started—
a root touch water,
a tip break sand—
Mounds from that can rise
on held mounds,
a gesture of building, keeping,
a trapping
into shape.
Firm ground is not available ground.
By Emily Dickinson
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -
Substantial Planes
By A. R. Ammons
It doesn't
matter
to me
if
poems mean
nothing:
there's no
floor
to the
universe
and yet
one
walks the
floor.
Gravelly Run
By A. R. Ammons
I don’t know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:
for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:
the swamp’s slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge:
holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars’ gothic-clustered
spires could make
green religion in winter bones:
so I look and reflect, but the air’s glass
jail seals each thing in its entity:
no use to make any philosophies here:
I see no
god in the holly, hear no song from
the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter
yellow in the pines: the sunlight has never
heard of trees: surrendered self among
unwelcoming forms: stranger,
hoist your burdens, get on down the road.