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POTD - The City Limits by A.R. Ammons

March 27, 2015 in poem

The City Limits

by A. R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.


From The Selected Poems: 1951-1977, Expanded Edition, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1986 by A. R. Ammons.

I love thinking how so much of Ammons' greatest poetry he wrote while an elementary school principal, a real estate salesman, an editor, and an executive in his father's biological glass company. His surprising and swerving mind embues the world we live our lives in with the radiance of meaning and beauty.

Transient
The Selected Poems (Expanded Edition)
By A. R. Ammons
A. R. Ammons: Selected Poems (American Poets Project)
By A. R. Ammons
Tags: poems, ammons
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