Baseball Poem

The Crowd At The Ball Game 

           by William Carlos Williams - 

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly
by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them—  

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius—

all to no end save beauty
the eternal—  

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful  

for this
to be warned against  

saluted and defied—
It is alive, venomous  

it smiles grimly
its words cut—  

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it—

The Jew gets it straight— it
is deadly, terrifying—  

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives  

day by day in them
idly—  

This is
the power of their faces  

It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is  

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail  

permanently, seriously
without thought