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84
“CRICKET I SING”
Game of all games, than Olympian, Roman, serener;Cricket I sing!
Here is no blood barbarian dyeing the sward;
No thumbs turned upward or down.
Only verdure and pipe-clay and silence perfect;
The sacred silence of the game!
Hark! I evolve under ribs of parody soul of an Epic,
Who knows?
Scintillant, modern, bizarre!
Allons!
The uncertainty, first of rain in the night, meaning so much, victory or defeat;
The slow rolling of the ground, the roller how heavy!
Five persons silent, bearing the shafts in front,
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Or in your ear, camerado, does he but feign assistance,
And in reality shoves not at all?
The spinning of the coins by the captains before the pavilion,
So much depending!
The ringing of the bell!
What bell indeed comparable, ship-bell, fire-bell, or bell even of tabernacle non-conforming?
The arena of set faces!
(The perfect white, now that I see clearer, of the popping-crease),
The working-man, slunk from his sullen job away to the verdurous;
The faultless, glossy, top-hatted he of the West;
Business eschewed for the day anyhow.
The fieldsmen emerging, some from one postern, some from the other;
Yet wherefore, insula democratic?
Is it so easy thus to sever the sheep from the goats?
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Dost thou not scent in this custom something feudal, passé?
To me at least something mouldering, ivied, baronial.
I know not who thou art, camerado, but from thy chin I guess thee
A hater of razors and of kings.
I surmise by that stubble democratic.
Revenons!
The stern tacit approach of the first two batsmen
They take their guard, but glance fearfully around,
Suspicious of ambush, laid either side.
The sphinx-like umpire, surpliced, motionless!
(Tho' for a matter of that a sudden leg-slash might render his children fatherless.)
His decision final anyhow; no appeal!
The score-board, infallible, the figures disappearing, returning, silent,
Numerals as of Judgment-day!
The panic of the young out-fieldsman, on test here,
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No thumbs turned upward, or down; only faces,
Intent, judicial!
If he should fumble it?
Come now, memories, ghosts of Lord's, or the Oval!
“W. G.” in his prime I see, black-bearded, ungainly, autocratic,
With huge, thoughtful, bound-reaching stroke;
Resourceful, a cumbrous ground-coverer,
A luring, slow, aerial trundler,
Incredulous of umpires!
Spofforth, greyhoundish, lean, indefatigable,
Furious, the problem before him;
The wrist-sleeve masking the uncertain orb.
Ranji, alert, Oriental, perfidious!
With swift, sudden, unguessed glances,
The silk shirt flapping to and fro on the dusk body,
Quivering, mystical shirt!
Bonnor, ambrosial, flaxen, gigantic, fleet!
Shrewsbury, unexciting, each stroke a pattern, quietly perfect, a teacher.
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Demon deliveries;
Oft wounded ever returning!
All these and others many I see as I lounge and lean on the rails;
All these and others many I see, and I remember.
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