Applause flutters onto the open air
Like starlings bursting from a frightened elm,
And swings away across the lawns
In the sun’s green continuous calm
Of far July. Coming off the court,
You drop your racket by the judge’s tower
And towel off your face, alone, looking off,
While someone whispers to the giggling winner,
And the crowd rustles, awning’d in tiers
Or under umbrellas at court-end tables,
Glittering like a carnival
Against the mute distance of maples
Along their strumming street beyond
the walls of afternoon. Bluely, loss
hurts in your eyes–not loss merely,
but seeing how everything is less
that seemed so much, how life moves on
past either defeat or victory,
how, too old to cry, you shall find steps
to turn away. Now others volley
behind you in the steady glare;
the crowd waits in its lazy revel,
holding whiskey sours, talking, and pointing,
whose lives (like yours) will not unravel
to a backhand, a poem, or a sunrise,
though they may wish for it. The sun
brandishes softly his swords of light
on faces, grass, and sky. You’ll win
hereafter, other days, when time
is kinder than this worn July
that keeps you like a snapshot: losing,
your eyes, once, made you beautiful.
As, even, after a life of effort and chill,
One flashes back to the safety of childhood,
To that strange place where one had first
begun.