Watching baseball
sitting in the sun
eating popcorn
Rereading Ezra Pound
and wishing Juan Marichal
would hit a hole right through
the Anglo-Saxon tradition
in the First Canto
and demolish the barbarian invaders
When the San Francisco Giants take the field
and everybody stands up to the National Anthem
with some Irish tenor's voice
piped over the loudspeakers
with all the players stuck dead in their places
and the white umpires like Irish cops
in their black suits and little black caps
presses over their hearts
standing straight and still
like some funeral of a blarney bartender
and all facing East
as if expecting some Great White Hope
or the Founding Fathers
to appear on the horizon
like 1066 or 1776 or all that
But Willie Mays appears instead
in the bottom of the first
and a roar goes up
as he clouts the first one into the sun
and takes off
like a footrunner from Thebes
The ball is lost in the sun
and maidens wail after him
but he keeps running
through the Anglo-Saxon epic
And Tito Fuentes comes up
Looking like a bullfighter
in his tight pants and small pointed shoes
And the rightfield bleachers go mad
With chicanos & blacks & Brooklyn beerdrinkers
"Sweet Tito! Sock it to heem, Sweet Tito!"
And Sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket
and smacks one that doesn't come back at all
and flees around the bases
like he's escaping from the United fruit Company
as the Gringo dollar beats out the Pound
and Sweet Tito beats it out
like he's beating out usury
not to mention fascism and anti-semitism
And Juan Marchial comes up
and the chicano bleachers go loco again
as Juan belts the first fast ball
out of sight
and rounds first and keeps going
and rounds second and rounds third
and keeps going
and hits pay-dirt
to the roars of the grungy populace
As some nut presses the backstage panic button
for the tape-recorded National anthem again
to save the situation
but he don't stop nobody this time
in their revolution round the loaded white bases
in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics
in the Territorio Libre of baseball
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still four-leaf clovers
Is not our land still beautiful
our fields not full of armed enemies
our cities never bombed
by foreign invaders
never occupied
by iron armies
speaking iron tongues
Are not our warriors still valiant
ready to defend us
Are not our senators
still wearing fine togas
Are we not still a great people
in the greatest country in all the world
Is this not still a free country
Are not our fields still ours
our gardens still full of flowers
our ships with full cargoes
Why then do some still fear
the barbarians coming
coming coming
in their huddled masses
(What is that sound that fills the ear
drumming drumming?)
Is not Rome still Rome
Is not Los Angeles still Los Angeles
Are these not the last days of the Roman Empire
Is not beauty still beauty
And truth still truth
Are there not still poets
Are there not still lovers
Are there not still mothers
sisters and brothers
Is there not still a full moon
once a month
Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still stars at night
Can we not still see them
in bowl of night
signalling to us
our manifest destiny?
www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/poems/july-dec01/ferlinghetti_10-26.html
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
Of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti