To The Athlete With A Broken Leg

To The Athlete With A Broken Leg
(A Quatrain for A E Housman, whose attempt I find altogether too morbid)

Look up; the clouded, mottled stars

Speckle their light on sun-faded plastic

Of the dew-dotted rafters, beyond the bars

From where you run to greet the dawn.

Your routine, your farce, your dance

A race to be faster, to push that limit

Your ideal shoes, the optimal stance

The gun fires, and you are gone.

You know this, and they watch you go

Your morning glory blazes the tracks

The clouds' chorus lights the world aglow

As the sky twitches your puppet-string heart.

The sour coach sneers, never one to impress

And you dance your solitary Sarabande

Now you're hopeless, sleepless, perennially less

A verdant world a hair-sliver apart.

Your face is crisscrossed with despair.

Despondent, discombobulate, pained

With a mangled, neglected salvation prayer,

A cast embracing your weathered foot.

The seed has consumed the sower's soul

A broken, confused face, with sadness painted

Your career feels rattled, all through its whole

The collapsed pedestal where your laurels were put.

The selectors say sorry, with their cold dark eyes

You know they'll never be sorry enough

You know that you will take months to rise

And much more time to regain your speed.

The coach shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head

Another foolish child, broken on the track, so still

A dream deferred to another pair of calves, not dead

Fresh targets to make sweat and cry and bleed.

I would tell you it's okay, that this hard luck will pass

The universe equally hates all of its saplings

But it's really not- you mourn on shattered glass.

Your foot is broken, short-circuiting your spotlight.

You will heal, and perhaps you will not be most fleet,

A silence will permeate your every sprint

But you will run, fulfil your inner athlete

Look up, how the stars shine from the rafters tonight.

Someday, they will shine in the day for you too.