"magnificent with being"

Still

A.R.Ammons


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!