Written by
Robert Pinsky |
Some of us believe
We would have conceived romantic
Love out of our own passions
With no precedents,
Without songs and poetry--
Or have invented poetry and music
As a comb of cells for the honey.
Shaped by ignorance,
A succession of new worlds,
Congruities improvised by
Immigrants or children.
I once thought most people were Italian,
Jewish or Colored.
To be white and called
Something like Ed Ford
Seemed aristocratic,
A rare distinction.
Possibly I believed only gentiles
And blonds could be left-handed.
Already famous
After one year in the majors,
Whitey Ford was drafted by the Army
To play ball in the flannels
Of the Signal Corps, stationed
In Long Branch, New Jersey.
A night game, the silver potion
Of the lights, his pink skin
Shining like a burn.
Never a player
I liked or hated: a Yankee,
A mere success.
But white the chalked-off lines
In the grass, white and green
The immaculate uniform,
And white the unpigmented
Halo of his hair
When he shifted his cap:
So ordinary and distinct,
So close up, that I felt
As if I could have made him up,
Imagined him as I imagined
The ball, a scintilla
High in the black backdrop
Of the sky.
Tight red stitches.
Rawlings.
The bleached
Horsehide white: the color
Of nothing.
Color of the past
And of the future, of the movie screen
At rest and of blank paper.
"I could have.
" The mind.
The black
Backdrop, the white
Fly picked out by the towering
Lights.
A few years later
On a blanket in the grass
By the same river
A girl and I came into
Being together
To the faint muttering
Of unthinkable
Troubadours and radios.
The emerald
Theater, the night.
Another time,
I devised a left-hander
Even more gifted
Than Whitey Ford: A Dodger.
People were amazed by him.
Once, when he was young,
He refused to pitch on Yom Kippur.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
Of garden truck he made his fare,
As his bright eyes bore witness;
Health was his habit and his care,
His hobby human fitness.
He sang the praise of open sky,
The gladth of Nature's giving;
And when at last he came to die
It was of too long living.
He held aloof from hate and strife,
Drank peace in dreamful doses;
He never voted in his life,
Loved children, dogs and roses.
Let tyrants romp in gory glee,
And revolutions roister,
He passed his days as peacefully
As friar in a cloister.
So fellow sinners, should you choose
Of doom to be a dodger,
At eighty be a bland recluse
Like this serene old codger,
Who turned his back on fear and fret,
And died nigh eighty-seven .
.
.
His name was--Robert Service: let
Us hope he went to Heaven
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
Painter, would you make my picture?
Just forget the moral stricture.
Let me sit
With my belly to the table,
Swilling all the wine I'm able,
Pip a-lit;
Not a stiff and stuffy croaker
In a frock coat and a choker
Let me be;
But a rollicking old fellow
With a visage ripe and mellow
As you see.
Just a twinkle-eyed old codger,
And of death as artful dodger,
Such I am;
I defy the Doc's advising
And I don't for sermonising
Care a damn.
Though Bill Shakespeare had in his dome
Both - I'd rather wit than wisdom
For my choice;
In the glug glug of the bottle,
As I tip it down my throttle,
I rejoice.
Paint me neither sour not soulful,
For I would not have folks doleful
When I go;
So if to my shade you're quaffing
I would rather see you laughing,
As you know.
In Life's Great Experiment
I'll have heaps of merriment
E're I pass;
And though devil beckons me,
And I've many a speck on me,
Maybe some will recon me -
Worth a glass.
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