Mule Song

Portrait of A.R. Ammons
A.R. Ammons 1926–2001

Silver will lie where she lies sun-out, whatever turning the world does, longeared in her ashen, earless, floating world: indifferent to sores and greengage colic, where oats need not come to, bleached by crystals of her trembling time: beyond all brunt of seasons, blind forever to all blinds, inhabited by brooks still she may wraith over broken fields after winter or roll in the rye-green fields: old mule, no defense but a mule's against disease, large-ribbed, flat-toothed, sold to a stranger, shot by a stranger's hand, not my hand she nuzzled the seasoning-salt from.

Keep reading

Discover more of A.R. Ammons’s poetry.

Explore all poems

Readers

Reader discussion

Your turn

Shown with your comment.

Never published. Only so we can reach you.

Comments are read before they appear. See our terms.