They wanted the world and they’re one and done,
but happy the catcher and happy the man are still
open-mouthed, the scene repeated and shown
again as an actual moment of happiness,
when every man leaps man and boy into a pile,
a pile of fooly-bears worth millions upon millions,
which pile is the outward teeming of an ecstasy,
one they’ll never ascribe to each other, not even
as told to themselves.
Is winning one better than sex?
Let’s say that it’s simpler, more easily halved
and halved again. O say is it joyous, like childbirth?
Oh no, I shouldn’t think so.
The moment arrives and it has no future
and no design, no watermark
that a money child would recognize.
An easy win’s the only adversity.
Joy, unconfined, will exit the field where skill
until now has been dominant. Faith is not insubstantial
in the moment of glory, but now is the glory
where glory belongs, among the unlucky.
There’s no one else to relieve the city, or fill the seats.
Come tomorrow, they’ll be putting up numbers.
THE POETRY OF THE GAME