Glass By A. R. Ammons
The song
sparrow puts all his
saying
into one
repeated song:
what
variations, subtleties
he manages,
to encompass denser
meanings, I’m
too coarse
to catch: it’s
one song, an over-reach
from which
all possibilities,
like filaments,
depend:
killing,
nesting, dying,
sun or cloud,
figure up
and become
song—simple, hard:
removed.
Source: Collected Poems: 1951-1971 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1972)
