Nicholas Erskine
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.
