++++++++++++++++++++++++++From the dark
fragmentations
++++++++build me up
++++into a changed brilliant shape,

+++++++++++++++++++realized order,
+++++++++++++++mind singing again
+++++++++new song, moving into the slow beat and

+++++++++++++++disappearing beat
+++++++++++++++++++of perfect resonance:

+++++++++++++++how many
times must I be broken and reassembled! anguish of becoming,
+++++++pain of moulting,
+++descent! before the unending moment of vision:

+++how much disorder must I learn to tolerate
++++++to find materials
++++++++++++++++++for the new house of my sight!

+++++++++++arrange me
+++++++into disorder
++++near the breaking of the pattern
++++but
+++++++++++should disorder start to
tear, the breaking down of possible return,
++++oh rise gleaming in recall,

sing me again towering remade, born into a wider
+++++++order, structures deepening,
++++++++++inching rootlike into the dark!

—

A. R. Ammons was a two-time winner of the National Book Award and the recipient of a National Book Critics Circle Award. His many additional honors include the Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Robert Frost Medal, the Ruth Lilly Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations.