John Drury: “Going to a Ball Game with the Budapest String Quartet”
GOING TO A BALL GAME WITH THE BUDAPEST STRING QUARTET
I went along as company for Mark,
my friend from school, whose father was the cellist.
The Senators were playing Kansas City,
two bad teams, battling for last place, a bad
introduction for new fans, the quartet
lifting and quaffing jumbo cups of beer.
The day was sunny, early spring, the crowd
buzzing between the cat-calls and the cheers,
and I was serving as interpreter
who could explain runs, hits, foul balls, and strike-outs.
The game’s absurdity first made them frown,
as though they smelled something bad, or got a blast
of rock and roll, but soon they joked in Russian,
exploding into laughter, almost dancing
in their hard seats, and I could picture them
moving together in hilarity
at Beethoven’s epic jesting, still an ensemble
in the scherzo of a noisy stadium.
John Drury is the author of Sea Level Rising (Able Muse Press, 2015) and three previous poetry collections. He teaches at the University of Cincinnati.