Baseball Poem

"I Dream of a Baseball Star"

   by Gregory Corso

I dreamed Ted Williams

leaning at night

against the Eiffel Tower, weeping.

He was in uniform

and his bat lay at his feet

-- knotted and twiggy.

"Randall Jarrell says you're a poet!" I cried.

"So do I! I say you're a poet!"

He picked up his bat with blown hands;

stood there astraddle as he would in the batter's box,

and laughed! flinging his schoolboy wrath

toward some invisible pitcher's mound

-- waiting the pitch all the way from heaven.

It came; hundreds came! all afire!

He swung and swung and swung and connected not one

sinker curve hook or right-down-the middle.

A hundred strikes!

The umpire dressed in strange attire

thundered his judgment: YOU'RE OUT!

And the phantom crowd's horrific boo

dispersed the gargoyles from Notre Dame.

And I screamed in my dream:

God! throw thy merciful pitch!

Herald the crack of bats!

Hooray the sharp liner to left!

Yea the double, the triple!

Hosannah the home run!