Play by A.R. Ammons
Play
A.R. AmmonsNothing’s going to become of anyone
except death:
therefore: it’s okay
to yearn
too high:
the grave accommodates
swell rambunctiousness &ruin’s not
compromised by magnificence:the cut-off point
liberates us to the
common disaster: so
pick a perch —
apple bough for example in bloom —
tune up
and if you likedrill imagination right through necessity:
it’s all right:
it’s been taken care of:is allowed, considering
MARGINALIA
Thinking of the fire trees at the university. Remembering what it feels like walking past them, under them, while the leaves are falling. It felt like fall. Wishing we had fall.
ABOUT A.R. AMMONS
Archibald Randolph (A.R.) Ammons was born in rural North Carolina on February 18, 1926. His experiences growing up on a cotton and tobacco farm during the Great Depression inspired a great deal of his poetry. Ammons wrote his first poems while serving aboard a Navy destroyer during World War II. Ammons’s many honors include two National Books Awards, a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Library of Congress’s Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, and the Bollingen Prize… (more)
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ENDNOTES
- Explore other works in pursuit of: freedom • mortality • yearning • Or browse the index
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