Gravelly Run
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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
~ A. R. Ammons
~
(The Selected
Poems)
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