A. R. Ammons - Terrain lyrics

The soul is a region without definite boundaries: it is not certain a prairie can exhaust it or a range enclose it: it floats (self-adjusting) like the continental ma**, where it towers most extending its deepest mantling base (exactly proportional): does not flow all one way: there is a divide: river systems thrown like winter tree-shadows against the hills: branches, runs, high lakes: stagnant lily-marshes: is variable, has weather: floods unbalancing gut it, silt altering the distribution of weight, the nature of content: whirlwinds move through it or stand spinning like separate orders: the moon comes: there are barren spots: bogs, rising by self-accretion from themselves, a growth into destruction of growth, change of character, invasion of peat by poplar and oak: semi-precious stones and precious metals drop from muddy water into mud: it is an area of poise, really, held from tipping, dark wild water, fierce eels, contercurrents: a habitat, precise ecology of forms mutually to some extent tolerable, not entirely self-destroying: a crust afloat: a scum, foam to the dep and other-natured: but deeper than depth, too: a vacancy and swirl: it may be sperical, light and knowledge merely the iris and opening to the dark methods of its sight: how it comes and goes, ruptures and heals, whirls and stands still: the moon comes: terrain.