Poets’ Ghosts at Giants Games

William Shakespeare: Sonnet DCCXV

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thy staff’s not shadowed with such temperance,
And rough waves splash when balls land in the
          bay.
The summer’s tantrum heat, is it perchance
The Eye of Heaven, angry, vainly blocked
By thy great head? Is his complexion’s glow
Now by some evil alchemy most pocked?
But all must suffer from thy mighty blow.
A Ruth or Aaron crashes to the ground
Amid the needling of a fan who screams
All through the nation, cries that soon resound:
“He is a fake!  He uses Clears and Creams.”
           So long’s thy codpiece echoes emptily,
           No baseball fan will e’er give life to thee.

Francois Villon: A Ballade of Dead Sluggers

Tell me, where’s that Famous Hall
With Baker, whose mighty swats went yard,
He now is deader than the ball
He had to pound so very hard.
Did live balls, or Ruth then change the guard?
Although his belly was mostly beer,
He swung like no previous tub of lard.
           But where are the blows of yesteryear?

And what of Mr. Mantle’s maul,
That whacked balls miles o’er the greensward?
Or Maris’s asterisky Fall,
(No one else’s hits were starred).
Or Aaron, who some southern gents wished tarred
For hitting balls to the stratosphere.
From games he just missed being barred.
           But where are the blows of yesteryear?

And Sosa, holding fans in thrall,
Or Big Mac, though his feats be marred,
His meat meeting cheese, arched it over the wall,
And investors all fought for his rookie card.
Then Palmiero’s pleas, (but what a career!)
When, with those Congressmen, he sparred.
           But where are the blows of yesteryear?

Don’t ask of a record that’s now a shard,
Ask this, when we’ve lost what we once held dear:
For a time we’ll have homers all Bonded and
         jarred,
           But where are the blows of yesteryear?

Ryõta: Haiku

Oh, the wide world’s ways!
    Inane feats not left unwatched
         Even for three days!

Taniguchi Buson: As the Spring Rain Falls

As the spring rain falls,
    shrinking in it, on the roof
         are Barry Bond’s balls.

e.e. cummings: Chanson et Danse Innocente

in Just-
spring     when the world is ball-
blusterous the little
minded Cansecoman

whispers     far     and wee

and congressmanwaxman comes
runningatthemouth from marble halls and
his piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is money-grubbing Bonderful
the clearusing
old Cansecoman whispers
far     and     wee
and betsandinferences come dancing
from barrooms and pressrooms and

it’s spring
and
    the

         little horned

Cansecoman     whispers
far
and
wee