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Sport 39: 2011
iii
iii
And spring, let the season
spare the boy’s bare-heeled
bracing of cold in Lyttelton
shame as Fred Page read
it, church-poor and poorer
than the coalyard’s brothers,
the cricketer, the pianist,
who at least clanged boots.
Bells
though tempered nicely
given time, given times,
the boy’s to the end and beyond
good as newly rung.
Young
Page insisting, ‘Vain
at that age even,’ playgrounds
reminisced, the iron-clappered
pealing from father & Father
to ensuing sons.
The steeple
on course to be fractured,
the time-ball crazed.
And the shock of the poems,
writes Allen,
scores still to come.