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第4章 Markings

I

We marked the pitch: four jackets for four goalposts,

That was all. The corners and the squares

Were there like longitude and latitude

Under the bumpy thistly ground, to be

Agreed about or disagreed about

When the time came. And then we picked the teams

And crossed the line our called names drew between us.

Youngsters shouting their heads off in a field

As the light died and they kept on playing

Because by then they were playing in their heads

And the actual kicked ball came to them

Like a dream heaviness, and their own hard

Breathing in the dark and skids on grass

Sounded like effort in another world …

It was quick and constant, a game that never need

Be played out. Some limit had been passed,

There was fleetness, furtherance, untiredness

In time that was extra, unforeseen and free.

II

You also loved lines pegged out in the garden,

The spade nicking the first straight edge along

The tight white string. Or string stretched perfectly

To mark the outline of a house foundation,

Pale timber battens set at right angles

For every corner, each freshly sawn new board

Spick and span in the oddly passive grass.

Or the imaginary line straight down

A field of grazing, to be ploughed open

From the rod stuck in one headrig to the rod

Stuck in the other.

III

All these things entered you

As if they were both the door and what came through it.

They marked the spot, marked time and held it open.

A mower parted the bronze sea of corn.

A windlass hauled the centre out of water.

Two men with a cross-cut kept it swimming

Into a felled beech backwards and forwards

So that they seemed to row the steady earth.

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