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Autonomy

I am living without you because
   of a terror, a farfetched
notion that I
can’t live without you
 
which I must narrow down & quell,
   for how can I live
worthy of you, in the
freedom of you limber engagements,
 
in the casual uptakes of your
   sweetest compliances
if stricken in your presence
by what your absence stills:
 
to have you, I school myself
   to let you go; how terrible
to buy that absence
before the fragrance of any presence comes:
 
but though I am living without
   you, surely
I can’t live
without you: the thought of
 
you hauls my heavy
    body up,
floats me around,
gives my motions point, just the thought.
Other works by A. R. Ammons...



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