The dangers of the subjunctive mood
when love affairs are still all coal and smoke
and gestures focus on almost stationary details,
a thistle, the moon, an unexpected thrush
In the basic architecture of cricket (apart
from its medieval tone) is the almost sultry
skill of the leg glance, that involves
‘a very short parlay with the head’
as Ranjitsinhji said, misquoting Jane Austen
and not bothering to move
from the path of the dangerous ball
It is how you make a song
out of someone else’s rumour
far beyond the boundary
having reached for what is remote,
covert during a tender alliance
like hidden stairs down into a pond
Almost sinless, with no moral or latitude
as at the outskirts of a particular kind of writing
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