ongoingingness

                                   ...but, of

course, there are beaches and galaxies and
long, long poems: I’ve begun to think that
nothing in the world is so important as a long,
long poem, a place anyone’s obsession can be

found lost in, an ongoingingness too reliable to
conclude, a problem that doesn’t finish
its way out of existence, a clinging that holds
clinging on as its enterprise...

—A.R. Ammons, from “Scarcities,” an unpublished poem, typescript dated Sept. 15, 1986, Chicago Review (A. R. Ammons issue; 57: 1 / 2 Summer/Autumn 2012)