The Cricketing Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, American Emigre

Let us go then, you and I
where a bowler flings a red ball across the sky
and morning spreads its wet across the wicket,
let us go, through pullulating streets
the cacophonous retreats
of sidewalk hawkers near Pokfulam Road
and diesel belching trucks each with its overload:
streets that follow like some athlete’s foot
to lead us to the looming scoreboard and the score . . .
Oh, do not ask, “Where is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

Near the scoreboard women come and go
talking of Michelangelo.

The tabby smog that rubs its back upon the window screens,
slipped by the terraces, made a sudden leap
and seeing that it was a wet weekend
curled once about the pitch, and fell asleep

And indeed there will be time
for the tabby smog that slips along the pitch;
there will be time, there will be time
to prepare straight bats for the bowlers that you meet.
There will be time to cut to leg
and time for thirty overs and some more
and time for all the wiles of hands
that lift and drop a googlie on your crease;
and time for an umpire’s wrong decisions
and the crowd’s half-heated cheers
before the taking of sandwiches and beers.

And indeed there will be time
to wonder, “Do I dare to make a run with ease?”
Time to turn around and scramble for the crease.
Would it have been worth it, after all,
to have squeezed the universe into a ball
and knocked it for a six beyond the wall?

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
Shall I wear the bottoms of my flannels rolled?

I shall wear white flannel trousers for cricket on the beach.
I have heard the umpires singing, each to each.

Andrew Parkin

Prof. Andrew Parkin (photo) is Emeritus Professor of English at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.