Lacrostick
In the game of Lacrostick
women are worshipped – they stand at the turnstiles
and are saluted by every man who enters.
The men kick around an oval ball,
are not allowed to touch it with their hands.
They kneel at a woman's skirts when they score.
Poets are the game's greatest supporters –
Ted Hughes sits on the Board for Preservation
next to someone who looks like George Szirtes.
He wears a long woollen coat and announces
his family is having a tea party for the cat.
The women say Any party is a celebration.
The President, of course, is a woman.
She is in charge of fines and new balls.
If a man forgets to salute or kneel he is surrounded
by women who stare at him in silence until he says
Okay I get it, I get it. No man yet, poet or player,
has had to be punished further.
women are worshipped – they stand at the turnstiles
and are saluted by every man who enters.
The men kick around an oval ball,
are not allowed to touch it with their hands.
They kneel at a woman's skirts when they score.
Poets are the game's greatest supporters –
Ted Hughes sits on the Board for Preservation
next to someone who looks like George Szirtes.
He wears a long woollen coat and announces
his family is having a tea party for the cat.
The women say Any party is a celebration.
The President, of course, is a woman.
She is in charge of fines and new balls.
If a man forgets to salute or kneel he is surrounded
by women who stare at him in silence until he says
Okay I get it, I get it. No man yet, poet or player,
has had to be punished further.
Lynne Rees was born and brought up in Wales. A recent selection of her work appears in The Pterodactyl’s Wing - Welsh World Poetry (Parthian Books 2003). She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in September 2003.
Page(s) 71
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