Baseball Canto by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (posted in celebration of Willie Mays' 80th Birthday)

Baseball Canto

Watching baseball

sitting in the sun

eating popcorn

reading 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 struck dead in their places

and the white umpires like Irish cops

in their black suits and little black caps

pressed over their hearts

standing straight and still

like at 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 don’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 Marichal 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 it 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  (age 92)