Triphammer Bridge
I wonder what to mean by sanctuary, if a real or
apprehended place, as of a bell rung in a gold
surround, or as of silver roads along the beaches
of clouds seas don’t break or black mountains
overspill; jail: ice here’s shapelier than anything,
on the eaves massive, jawed along gorge ledges, solid
in the plastic blue boat fall left water in: if I
think the bitterest thing I can think of that seems like
reality, slickened back, hard, shocked by rip-high wind:
sanctuary, sanctuary, I say it over and over and the
word’s sound is the one place to dwell: that’s it, just
the sound, and the imagination of the sound—a place.
-from The Selected Poems by A.R. Ammons (W.W. Norton, 1986)
2 comments:
I just discovered this beautiful poem in an old anthology I was reading (I've known Ammons but not this poem), and after I copied it out by hand, I went looking for it on line to send to friends. Nice to find it here posted just a few hours ago, I think.
PCrosby
This chaos of electrical connectedness without connections moves on a scale incommensurate with human thought and movement. It feels all price and no value, but then this poem, just as I needed it, cleanly printed-not printed. And another reader from a few days earlier finding it as well.
Monumental electrons are we?
Randomness calls.
MMeltzer
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