Degrees of Gray in Mallorca
You might play the final Sunday on a whim.
Say your patellar tendon broke down. The last good forehand
you had was years ago. You walk these streets laid out by the insane, past capri pants that didn't last, Serbs that did, the tortured try of
local 3.5s to accelerate their buggy whips.
Only churches are kept up. Federer turned 70 this year. The only troll is Mats Wilander, not knowing what he's done.
The principal supporting business now is rage. Hatred of various Big Servers, hatred of the ATP, The Djokovic Posse, the best liked girls who leave each year for Madrid. One clay slam and a Fedal Exho can't wipe the boredom out.
The 2010 boom, a grip change, a dance floor built on springs--
all memory resolves itself in gaze,
in panoramic green you know the Nole eats
or two stacks high above the town,
two dead APDs, the CC FH in collapse
for fifty years that won't fall down.
Isn't this your life? That Sureshian kiss
still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat so accurate, the church bell simply seems a pure announcement: ring and lose to f#$king Fish?
Don't hollow Babolats ring? Are Cortex
and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Mallorca, but towns of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
Uncle Toni will never let you have
until the baseline you came from dies inside?
Say no to yourself. Federer, twenty when the jail was built,
still laughs although his bh collapses. Someday soon, he says,
I'll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You're talking to yourself.
The KIA that brought you here still runs.
The money you buy lunch with, no matter when you won it,
is still silver
and Andy Murray who served your Bagel
is slender and his red hair lights the wall.
(apologies to Richard Hugo)
