{"id":5187,"date":"2016-09-01T10:43:30","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T10:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=5187"},"modified":"2024-03-05T23:18:39","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T23:18:39","slug":"fight-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2016\/09\/01\/fight-song\/","title":{"rendered":"FIGHT SONG by Paula Bohince"},"content":{"rendered":"

FIGHT SONG\u00a0 by Paula Bohince
\nAugust 2014<\/em>
\nA crisis on a monitor, and there\u2019s this
\nfootball field, white chalk formalizing grass,
\na spongy black track where I walk
\noff my no-baby weight.<\/p>\n

A deadline has passed,
\nso a journalist will leave this world
\nviolently as I go around an oval dumbly,
\nlike the big hand on a clock,<\/p>\n

just a minute inching along,
\nwith the beige high school on the hill,
\nfreshmen cheerleaders learning this year\u2019s
\nroutines, receivers running the yards,<\/p>\n

wearing armor under tee-shirts,
\nobeying a whistle, and it\u2019s clear to all
\nwho\u2019ll be stars and who\u2019ll leave the games
\nshamed.\u00a0 I feel like a baby,<\/p>\n

born in an American hospital, lost
\nfrom its mother, looking around amazed,
\nthen crying from the intensity.
\nThere\u2019s a girl by herself, twirling<\/p>\n

a baton.\u00a0 A toss from her thumb,
\nand it cartwheels up against clouds:
\nsilvery thrill, tumbling hope.
\nSomeone, over the summer, got his braces<\/p>\n

off.\u00a0 Another lifted weights
\nin front of a mirror to a rhythm of This year
\nwill be different<\/em>.\u00a0 Styles change,
\nthough beauty is always rewarded.<\/p>\n

Popular kids will be sent, loved, into
\na world that rewards them further.\u00a0 Others
\nwill hide in the library\u2019s mazes, grateful
\nto be hidden.\u00a0 Friday twilight<\/p>\n

brings loudspeakers, wet-eyed fathers,
\nemotional at the anthem, applause
\ncarrying the last watery notes off the field,
\nas their sons affix their helmets.<\/p>\n

Tawny daylilies framing the parking lot
\nwill fade by September.\u00a0 They\u2019ll die
\nwith the season, this place then transformed
\ninto a little war.\u00a0 I see the orange-<\/p>\n

dressed man as a flower opening forever,
\nbut if I open my eyes, I am dazed.
\nThe marching band will rise in its gawkiness,
\nbelonging to a brief, brassy happiness,<\/p>\n

playing the fight song, noise bleeding
\ninto noise, pain mixed with elation,
\nthe coldness of an innocent\u00a0 trumpet
\nwarmed by the human breath that fills it.<\/p>\n

A confession \u2013 I am one of that odd, if growing tribe: the British fan of American Football. I am of what I shall euphemistically call \u2018original vintage\u2019, being long enough in the tooth to have stayed up late on Sunday nights in the 1980s as Channel 4 beamed this violent, vibrant crash of movement to bemused yet intrigued viewers.<\/p>\n

I say \u2018confession\u2019 \u2013 over the last few years it has become clear that it is a sport which is actively, definitively dangerous to its players. The hits, the high-speed collisions, the damage wrought to bodies in short careers, the evidence of subsequent brain damage in retirement\u2026 a taste for this warfare with human weapons is starting to be difficult to admit to in certain company.<\/p>\n

And yet, and yet\u2026 it retains its glamour, its fascination to me at least; the sense that a particular kind of glory and valour can only be achieved through playing it. And all of those feelings were stirred again by Paula Bohince\u2019s \u2018Fight Song\u2019.<\/p>\n

The capturing of the sheer ruthless sorting into hierarchies that is part of sporting \u2013 and hence wider \u2013 life is elegantly done:<\/p>\n

obeying a whistle, and it\u2019s clear to all
\nwho\u2019ll be stars, and who\u2019ll leave the games
\nshamed. I feel like a baby,<\/p>\n

As is the hopeless optimism, the \u201crhythm of This year \/ will be different<\/em>.\u201d; the pride of fathers in their sons \u2013 these small-town heroes who might, just might, make it on a bigger stage; but also the underlying oddity of these comforting rituals, \u201cthe orange- \/ dressed man as a flower opening forever\u201d.<\/p>\n

This poem is a reminder that, for all its brutality, its machismo, the desire to do damage at its core, there is still something noble here, perhaps, that we will miss when the sport is, inevitably, done and relegated to a covert, underground freakshow. And it also says why, deep down, we might want to watch, be a part of any sport, this most glorious of trivialities \u2013 for its \u201csilvery thrill, tumbling hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rishi Dastidar<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FIGHT SONG\u00a0 by Paula Bohince August 2014 A crisis on a monitor, and there\u2019s this football field, white chalk formalizing grass, a spongy black track where I walk off my no-baby weight. A deadline has passed, so a journalist will leave this world violently as I go around an oval dumbly, like the big hand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5187"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6103,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5187\/revisions\/6103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}