Bradman’s Last Innings

Bowled for a duck, you could have asked for better…
From the first, through the years
of Depression, so many came to see you, forgetting

the dole queues, the homes dull with a long
democracy.  And then the War, women
waiting for their Saturday oval husbands.

And peace.  Padded up again, you gave people
something the world lacked: rules
to play by, winners, clear white flannels

sharp against the green turf.  But it never works out,
never – four runs short of that century
average, at the last, betrayed by your own game.

 

from Light Pressure (1983)