Monday, October 21, 2013

Identity, A.R. Ammons


Identity
By A. R. Ammons
(1926 - 2001)


1) An individual spider web
identifies a species:

an order of instinct prevails
          through all accidents of circumstance,
                    though possibility is
high along the peripheries of
spider
                                        webs:
                                        you can go all
                              around the fringing attachments

                              and find
disorder ripe,
entropy rich, high levels of random,
                    numerous occasions of accident:

2) the possible settings
of a web are infinite:

                    how does
the spider keep
                              identity
                    while creating the web
                    in a particular place?

                    how and to what extent
                              and by what modes of chemistry
                              and control?

it is
wonderful
                    how things work: I will tell you
                                        about it
                                        because

it is interesting
and because whatever is
moves in weeds
                    and stars and spider webs
and known
                                        is loved:
                              in that love,
                              each of us knowing it,
                              I love you,

for it moves within and beyond us,
                              sizzles in
to winter grasses, darts and hangs with bumblebees
by summer windowsills:

                              I will show you
the underlying that takes no image to itself,
                    cannot be shown or said,
but weaves in and out of moons and bladderweeds,
                              is all and
                    beyond destruction
                    because created fully in no
particular form:

                                        if the web were perfectly pre-set,
                                        the spider could
                              never find
                              a perfect place to set it in: and

                              if the web were
perfectly adaptable,
if freedom and possibility were without limit,
                                        the web would
lose its special identity:

          the row-strung garden web
keeps order at the center
where space is freest (intersecting that the freest
                              "medium" should
                              accept the firmest order)

and that
order
                                        diminishes toward the
periphery
                    allowing at the points of contact
                              entropy equal to entropy.

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