Rites of Passage.

Mann, Chris

Rites of Passage

        1

   Hoarse shouts of Get him! Get him/
      echoing from a few hunched anoraks
   lutching beers in a row on the stand.
   My brilliant dash below the floodlights
      was nearing its edge, its dive into fame.
   Ahead of me the try-line, the corner flag.

   Ahead--what I was panting to achieve,
      what all young bucks I guess are after,
   points on a board, backslaps from a team.
   Wham! Hit sideways round the knees
      I was over the side-line and falling
   when some heroic idiot rammed my back.

   The whistle shrieked. The highveld grass
      rose up to meet me in a rush. Crunch!
   Gasp. Wheeze. Open eyelids. A crack.

   Observe moths. Whizzing round floodlight.
      Red socks round ankles. A hairy leg.
   Sweating faces, staring from the sky.

        2

   Strange. I knew who the fellow was
      before I'd even hit the ground.
   A mining engineer, pursuing like me
   the mystic grail of higher education
      among Gold City's groves of academe.
   He'd sought to make men of us freshers,

   inviting us to down-down vodka and beer,
      to cleanse our straggly hair in toilet-bowls
   and birth a barbed-wire brick on stage.
   Which chivalry me and my brave knights,
      the sad-voiced minstrel with a lyre,
   the media squire, had graciously declined.
   So when that stubbly prince of darkness
      smote me and my imagination flat
   I took it as a trial, a test of my corage,

   and leapt up and dusted off my shorts
      as nonchalant as if a sleeping-bag,
   flying in the wind, had brought me down.

   And when, next day, concealing a limp,
      I carried my tray of porridge and eggs
   across the dining-hall of College House
   and saw him glower at me across his toast,
      did I disclose my knees resembled oysters,
   my bardic ribs were sorely bruised?

   Not then, not then my knights, but now,
      when men with hair-loss, bellies, bonds
   and inner scars no longer don their shorts

   and sprint down raucous passageways
      of club supporters onto hard fields,
   but perched on bar-stools, mugs in hand,

   pass into the oblivion of an anecdote,
      a laugh, or it may be, live on a bit,
   their red socks still around their ankles,

   within the fixture, the sport of a poem.