I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I’ll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

(A. R. Ammons)

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –
In Corners – till a Day
The Owner passed – identified –
And carried Me away –

And now We roam in Sovreign Woods –
And now We hunt the Doe –
And every time I speak for Him –
The Mountains straight reply –

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow –
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through –

And when at Night – Our good Day done –
I guard My Master’s Head –
’Tis better than the Eider-Duck’s
Deep Pillow – to have shared –

To foe of His – I’m deadly foe –
None stir the second time –
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye –
Or an emphatic Thumb –

Though I than He – may longer live
He longer must – than I –
For I have but the power to kill,
Without – the power to die –

5. in] the –
16. Deep] low
18. stir] harm
23. power] art

(Emily Dickinson, no. 754, about 1863.)

This varnished box shows nothing that protrudes, only a knob to turn to the next click, so that quite soon many little aluminum skyscrapers light up weakly within, while savage shoutings spurt contending for our attention.

A little apparatus with a wonderful ‘selectivity’. Ah, how ingenious it is to have refined the ear to this point. Why? To pour into it incessantly the most outrageous vulgarities.

All the foment of dung of the world’s melody.

Ah well, that’s what’s best, after all. The dung must be brought out and spread in the sun: such a flood sometimes fertilizes . . .

However, with a hurried step, return to the box, to sum up.

held in high esteem in every house these last years – plonked right in the middle of the parlour, all windows open – the buzzing, beaming little second garbage bin!

(Francis Ponge, trans. John Montague.)

Kings never touch doors.

They’re not familiar with this happiness: to push, gently or roughly before you one of these great, friendly panels, to turn towards it to put it back in place – to hold a door in your arms.

The happiness of seizing one of these tall barriers to a room by the porcelain knob of its belly; this quick hand-to-hand, during which your progress slows for a moment, your eye opens up and your whole body adapts to its new apartment.

With a friendly hand you hold on a bit longer, before firmly pushing it back and shutting yourself in – of which you are agreeably assured by the click of the powerful, well-oiled latch.

(Francis Ponge, trans. C. K. Williams.)

“To Ted Berrigan

It was when the words on the covers of books,
titles as true as false leaves led me to believe
in inviting the ultimate speculation of love –
that I could learn all of the subject –
that I first began to entertain what is sublime.

Like a moth I thought by reading Jokes and
Their Relation to the Unconscious or Beyond
the Pleasure Principle or Eat the Weeds or 
The Origin of the Species or even a book on 
Coup d’Etats or The Problem of Anxiety I 
could accomplish all the knowledge the titles implied.

Science that there is often more
in the notes on the back of a discarded envelope,
grammar in the shadows slanted on the wall
of the too bright night to verify the city light

and then awakening, babies, to turn and make notes
on the dream’s public epigrams and one’s own
weaknesses, self that’s prone to epigrammatic ridicule

and to meditate on fears of all the animal dangers
plus memories of reptilian appellations for all
our stages of learning to swim at a past day camp

It is to think this or that might include all
or enough to entertain all those who already know
that in this century of private apartments
though knowledge might be coveted hardly anything
is shared except penurious poetry, she or he
who still tends to titles as if all of us
are reading a new book called THE NEW LIFE.”

(Bernadette Mayer, pp. 20–21 in Onward: contemporary poetry and poetics, ed. Peter Baker.)