High Purpose in Poetry: A Primer

for A. R. Ammons

Only one thing is needed: to speak of matters elemental.
Of sand and dust, in all their multifarious forms,
But especially as dunes (which are "mountains

Recollected in tranquility"), of anything as basic
As water, fire, earth, or air: to lift it up and say of it.
There! Behold! to take the old hurly-burly of the world,
Its cyclones, coral reefs, tarns, and railroad tracks,

And fold them into a single affirmation, one massive Yes
Encompassing all facts, all laws, all sizes from the wee
But mighty force that knits electrons, quarks, and positrons
Into a net of kinship more complex than that which unites
The most obsessed of aborigines, among whom

Marriage to a second cousin twice-removed
May be construed as incest, to the friendly and majestic force
Of the far-off sun, whose warmth and light and X-rays
Glide, noiseless, through the universe, observed

(If at all) by solemn spectrometers in institutes
On the planets of stars as beneficent (perhaps)
As ours (for our sun, you know, is only one

Of what may be a whole infinitude of stars!): a Yes,
Furthermore, to the entire range of beings in between
The subatomic and the astronomical: to, for example,
The elm trees of Minneapolis, dying of Dutch elm disease,

To the dear birds about to be evicted, to the worms
They would have eaten, and the lawns, mown and unmown,
Among whose roots those worms are ever on the move:
In fact, what is there one may not affirm
To mutual advantage? for in affirming anything

Do we not, in effect, declare our souls
To stand in some provable proportion to
The object of their affirmation? it is a kind of
Affiancing, if not a marriage quite, a promise

To the sturdy world that we will go on coexisting
On terms, which we have set forth, of love and trust, albeit
With an eye peeled for predators and natural catastrophes:

For it would be sheer folly to deny such things can be,
Though as long as they're kept at a reasonable distance
From one's desk they're harmless enough, and even
Instructive: indeed, they are affirmable as grass: so

Say Yes to the African lion, and Yes to the merciless
Typhoon, and Yes even to killers crazed with drugs
And to the businessmen who supply them with their necessities,
Trying, meanwhile, to stay out of their way: in general, however,
It's best for affirmation to be limited to those objects in

Nature that can't reply: for imagine if a murderer
Or even the loan application examiner at your local bank,
Finding himself affirmed, were to decided that your Yes
Was insincere or failed to do justice to his condition --

Did not, for instance, take into account the phlebitis
That was driving him nuts: then you might be
Killed, or at any rate your application for a loan

Might be turned down, and the improvements you had planned
Would not be possible for yet another year,
And then you'd have to praise a leaking roof
Or a 1962 Plymouth Belvedere that barely moves,

And all because you had, in effect, misdirected
A smile: too late then to deplore the world's
Inequity, or any single person's in it, for
Your affirmations were so broad that logically
You must appreciate all cases, instances, and facts

On the theory that whatever is, is right, including
Enemies of whatever dimensions, from viruses to
Supernovae: too late to say, "Yes, but..." if you want
To preserve so much as a scrap of consistency or

Self-respect: avoid, therefore, or leave to novelists,
All human specificities: if figures must be
Introduced into a landscape for purposes of scale

(And usually a cow will serve as well) make them such generic
Types that viewers of the canvas cannot fail
To see them simply as instances of an agreeable,
Fleshy warmth amid the coolness of so many greens (like sections

Of tomato on top of spinach leaves): speak of
Mothers and sons, of workers whose rough hands you can imagine
Shaking, of dreamy adolescents and their dreams, but do not
Mention anyone by name, or if you must, at least impute
To them actions of a character so neutral as to tend

To uphold a general drift westward to affirmation,
Where all the facts of life have gathered like a jury
Of sand dunes convoked on a cyclorama high,
High above the box where the defendant stands accused,

Whose answer to every question is and ever shall be Yes:
Yes, that was what I wanted: Yes, that is who I am:
Until both sky and dunes dissolve into one all-sufficing Yes!

       -- Tom Disch