Pat Ransford
The unwritten rule
it demands initiative, competition and conflict, but is regulated by the unwritten rule of fair play. (Antonio Gramsci)
Not just the standard images –
clock tower, cropped green, long
sunlight, "whites";
or the arcane phrases –
64 not out
taken 3 wickets
rain stopped play
(that one I understand).
But also the red rose
and white - reminders of our
flickering centuries: thorns
for a civil war, flowers
for a civil
society.
So
as the batsman
takes guard against
the bowlers lope, sudden swoop
and unloosing, up from clef-shape,
with arm letting slip the ball
along the groove marked by his eye -
it's not just cricket
but glows like the red
ball:
"fair play"
jumping out of the
Italian I'm reading
the thicket of
political analysis -
as if it had come spinning
from that green.
Page(s) 40
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The