Tis the Season

"Love has its sonnets galore. War has its epics in heroic verse. Tragedy its sombre story in measured lines. Baseball has Casey at the Bat." - Albert Spalding

Ahhh, Spring. Finally. After a long, wet, and cold winter, it is refreshing to wake to the singing birds and budding trees and seasonal allergies. And, as of yesterday (go Boston!), Baseball Season. Again, hopes are raised and a clean slate is ready to be sullied again, with both joys and heartbreaks.

Sadly, football encroached upon our morning with the news of McNabb's trade, and we had to teach the boys that loyalties sometimes do have to change -- or at least be flexible. We comforted them with the knowledge the DeSean Jackson is still with us, even if Westbrook is not. Similarly, the excitement of slow pitch ball practice starting tomorrow was tempered by the fact that Steve will have to be a Yankee. Sigh.

However, it is still Spring! and with that in mind, I present today's poetic selection. Written by Ernest Thayer -- a former Harvard Lampooner -- and published over 100 years ago (1888), Casey at the Bat still resonates with baseball fans. Check out The Baseball Almanac website for more information on the poem's origin as well as an audio version.

Happy Spring!

Casey at the Bat

The Outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play.
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, if only Casey could get but a whack at that -
We'd put up even money, now, with Casey at the bat.

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a lulu and the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey's getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despis-ed, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and the men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile on Casey's face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped-
"That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one," the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone on the stand;
And its likely they'd a-killed him had not Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, "Strike two."

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out.

Two for One!!

Ok, I'm starting out a little slow, but it is Easter Week, people. What with Bunny Hayrides, egg dying, zoo trips, and three children following me around for Spring Break, I'm lucky to get a shower, let alone read some poetry. So, since I missed yesterday (you would be surprised at how tiring it is to take four little guys to Burger Thing, a Bunny Hayride, egg dying and then kicking their butts at Mario Kart), you can have two poems for today. I'm just that nice.

Today's first selection is a bit of a cheat and an advertisement. There is a very cool website for those who like poetry or think they might like poetry or who may, now and then, be looking for a poem. Poets.org is just the site to take care of all of those problems. In fact, if you prefer more modern poetry than the ancient stuff I tend to throw out there, you should sign up for their Poem A Day email for the month of April (see, another two for one. You can read that site AND mine!).

This is the poem they sent for April 2, 2010, by Derek Walcott. Born in the West Indies, Mr. Walcott was the 1992 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. He published his first poem at age 14 and has since gone on to write several collections of poems, plays and essays.

In The Village

I

I came up out of the subway and there were
people standing on the steps as if they knew
something I didn't. This was in the Cold War,
and nuclear fallout. I looked and the whole avenue
was empty, I mean utterly, and I thought,
The birds have abandoned our cities and the plague
of silence multiplies through their arteries, they fought
the war and they lost and there's nothing subtle or vague
in this horrifying vacuum that is New York. I caught
the blare of a loudspeaker repeatedly warning
the last few people, maybe strolling lovers in their walk,
that the world was about to end that morning
on Sixth or Seventh Avenue with no people going to work
in that uncontradicted, horrifying perspective.
It was no way to die, but it's also no way to live.
Well, if we burnt, it was at least New York.

II

Everybody in New York is in a sitcom.
I'm in a Latin American novel, one
in which an egret-haired viejo shakes with some
invisible sorrow, some obscene affliction,
and chronicles it secretly, till it shows in his face,
the parenthetical wrinkles confirming his fiction
to his deep embarrassment. Look, it's
just the old story of a heart that won't call it quits
whatever the odds, quixotic. It's just one that'll
break nobody's heart, even if the grizzled colonel
pitches from his steed in a cavalry charge, in a battle
that won't make him a statue. It is the hell
of ordinary, unrequited love. Watch these egrets
trudging the lawn in a dishevelled troop, white banners
trailing forlornly; they are the bleached regrets
of an old man's memoirs, printed stanzas.
showing their hinged wings like wide open secrets.

III

Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds.

IV

The Sweet Life Café

If I fall into a grizzled stillness
sometimes, over the red-chequered tablecloth
outdoors of the Sweet Life Café, when the noise
of Sunday traffic in the Village is soft as a moth
working in storage, it is because of age
which I rarely admit to, or, honestly, even think of.
I have kept the same furies, though my domestic rage
is illogical, diabetic, with no lessening of love
though my hand trembles wildly, but not over this page.
My lust is in great health, but, if it happens
that all my towers shrivel to dribbling sand,
joy will still bend the cane-reeds with my pen's
elation on the road to Vieuxfort with fever-grass
white in the sun, and, as for the sea breaking
in the gap at Praslin, they add up to the grace
I have known and which death will be taking
from my hand on this chequered tablecloth in this good place.


Poetry Part II!

Which brings us to my poem for today. I was reading through a list of popular poems, and this one stuck with me. Perhaps it is because I am feeling older lately, or that I am wondering what to do now that the boys are getting older and I am curious as to what wonderful things they will achieve. (They are all geniuses, you know.)

It was said by Walt Whitman that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow "was the sort of bard most needed in a materialistic age: He comes as the poet of melancholy, courtesy, deference—poet of all sympathetic gentleness—and universal poet of women and young people." His poem, A Psalm of Life, is a rallying cry to make one's mark upon the world, and to Live, not just to live.

And that is my Holy Saturday thought to ponder. Which one are you doing?

A Psalm of Life

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act to each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labor and to wait.

Poetry Month!!

Well, kids, it's that time of year again.

April is National Poetry Month, and to keep my aging brain from deteriorating even further, I'm going to attempt my poem-a-day posting. Some of you may remember my email chain from the pre-Nicholas years. This lovely blog will make things so much easier!

Comments, suggestions, etc. are welcome and appreciated, as I don't have 30 awesome poems exactly lined up yet.

Today we will start nice and easy, having been inspired with a trip to the zoo with the boys. By the way, starting April 10, the Philadelphia Zoo will be featuring some amazing Lego sculptures, one of which is a polar bear!

Our poem today is brought to us by the much missed poet Shel Siverstein. While largely known for his children's poetry (A Light in the Attic, Where the Sidewalk Ends), he also wrote the song "A Boy Named Sue" for Johnny Cash and was a playwright who worked with David Mamet.

Without further ado, here is our poem for April 1, 2010:

Bear in There

There's a polar bear
In our Frigidaire—
He likes it 'cause it's cold in there.
With his seat in the meat
And his face in the fish
And his big hairy paws
In the buttery dish,
He's nibbling the noodles,
He's munching the rice,
He's slurping the soda,
He's licking the ice.
And he lets out a roar
If you open the door.
And it gives me a scare
To know he's in there—
That polary bear
In our Fridgitydaire.