Sunset over the Beautiful Game

In penury sprung a little country boy with an ebony visage

With his lips, he wrote breast-soothing adage

For a vanquished father

Who failed to hoist the silvery pitcher of victory for his avid zealots

In tears, he mumbled a pledge to transcend his father’s frontiers

So soothing were his comforting words

That his father found repose for his troubled breast

And a smile supplanted a grimace of dismay at last

At serving-teen, he lightened the glow in his father’s race

And the radiance of joy drenched his father’s face Rehearsed with old hosiery, rags, and grapefruit

He stepped into the faint footprints and strides

Left on the field by his father

From the incubating father’s shoes and hose

Hatched a giant to conquer the world

A conqueror of boots, bars, and nets

The lawn made him his battlefield

Not with bows and arrows and swords

But with feints and sudden stops and starts

With entrancing ball maneuvers and powerful curving

A spring-heeled header of the ball he was

And doled out killer passes for fraternal friends to finish

Baptized and christened on the battlefield

As King of the beautiful game

In history scrolls etched we this epithet

Restless quills composed his eulogies for infants

Effigies of him were mounted on marble plinths in halls of fame

Skyscrapers draped with pictures of him

His alias usurped his name and reigned

And the land of the beautiful game was born

He gave his land a triune chalice of victory, conquer, and dominance

Shouts of him, songs of him, writings of him, and videos of him

All we read in parchments and saw in cinemas newsreels

In black and white we watched in wonder and wowed

From the farms and fevelas we listened to his heroic artistry

From the living rooms, we were entranced

By his pull of muscles, tendons, nerves

Beads of sweats, throbs of heart, and gasps for air

His shots traveled like a thunderbolt

And shattered nets made of steel

At sunset, the king of the lawn succumbed to the frailties of dotage

Tendons tired out, muscles maimed, and nerves numbed

Were portents of a call to say his long adeus and everlasting farewells

In sorrow we watched him descend into that eternal vault

Where the abiding Hand of Gawd beckoned him

Into the pantheon of the greats

May seraphic beings usher you into the Pearly Gates

And make you a saint of the beatified game.