Ammons - Collected Poems, 1951-1971

By A. R. Ammons Ommateum Expressions of Sea Level Corsons Inlet Tape for the Turn of the Year Northfield Poems Selected Poems Uplands Briefings Collected Poems: 19511971 (winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, 1973) Sphere: The Form of a Motion (winner of the 19731974 Bollingen Prize in Poetry) Diversifications The Snow Poems Highgate Roate The Selected Poems: 19511977 Selected Longer Poems A Coast of Trees (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, 1981) Worldly Hopes Lake Effect Country The Selected Poems: Expanded Edition Sumerian Vistas The Really Short Poems Garbage (winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, 1993) Brink Road Glare 1951-1971 A. R. AMMONS Adjusting type size may change line breaks. Landscape mode may help to preserve line breaks.

Copyright 1972 by A. R. Ammons First published as a Norton paperback 2001 For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 All rights reserved The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Ammons, A. R., 1926 Collected Poems, 19511971.

PS3501.M6A17 1972 811.54 72-5811 ISBN: 978-0-393-32192-0 ISBN: 978-0-393-35716-5 (e-book) W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110 www.wwnorton.com W. W. Contemporary Poets of South Jersey: Ocean City. Epoch: Fall Creek, Rectitude. Epos: Event, Look for my White Self, This Black Rich Country. Foxfire: Trouble Making Trouble (formerly, Front). Harpers: One More Time, Terminus, The Eternal City. The Hudson Review: Christmas Eve, Essay on Poetics. Lillabulero: Day, Definitions, Delaware Water Gap, Ground Tide, High Surreal, Sorting, Translating. Modern Occasions: The City Limits, Triphammer Bridge. The Nation: Timing. New American Review: The Arc Inside and Out. The New York Times: Communication. The New York Times: Communication.

The following publishers have kindly granted me permission to reprint poems from the cited books: Dorrance & Co.: Ommateum, 1955. Ohio State University Press: Expressions of Sea Level, 1964. Cornell University Press: Corsons Inlet, 1965; Northfield Poems, 1966. W. W. Norton & Co., Inc.: Uplands, 1970; Briefings, 1971.

Grace Abounding first appeared in Beyond the SquareA Tribute to Elliott Coleman, edited by Robert K. Rosenberg. Special thanks are due to the Creative Artists Public Service Program of the Cultural Council Foundation (New York State) for a grant which enabled me to spend the summer of 1971 preparing this volume. I must acknowledgeif in some cases re-acknowledgea sense of the continuous presence of certain people who have been necessary to my life and work: Josephine Miles, Frederick Morgan, John Logan, Josephine Jacobsen, Elliott Coleman, Milton Kessler, David Ray, Baxter Hathaway, Bernhard Kendler, Richard Howard, Harold Bloom. My sisters, Vida Cox and Mona Smith, have from the beginning of my writing sustained me unfailingly.

19511971 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 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 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 on loose platforms in 1349 and death jumps into the fire 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 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 O 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 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 and she sat still on her heavy webs I closed up all the natural throats of earth and cut my ties with every natural heart and saying farewell stepped out into the great open Bees stopped on the rock and rubbed their headparts and wings rested then flew on: ants ran over the whitish greenish reddish plants that grow flat on rocks and people never see because nothing should grow on rocks: I looked out over the lake and beyond to the hills and trees and nothing was moving so I looked closely along the lakeside under the old leaves of rushes and around clumps of drygrass and life was everywhere so I went on sometimes whistling