Radio Days

My father’s
Widow’s father
Died in the night,
His last days spent
Listening without sight
To his radio, head bent

Towards the announcer, who
In the little radio
Sounded the friend to his ears,
The old neighbor of the years,
Since blindness forced
The long, slow goodbye
To the man in the picture box.

We grow old, we grow old;
We shall wear the bottom of our trousers rolled.

And what did the radio say?
Baseball -
It was always baseball:
War, famine,
The weather,
Friends, birthdays,
And the departed wife -
Life long ago lost its time slot
To baseball and the long shots
Hit over the fence -

Fence the neighbor leaned over
On long ago tropical mornings
And asked for the news
In perfect regional Spanish:

Do you know who vanished?
And what of the Revolution?
Will you flee to America?

We grow old, we grow old;
We shall wear the bottom of our trousers rolled.

Now, in his little chair,
In the little room with the curtains drawn,
Came the news of American baseball,
Fresh as the air at dawn,
And fifty-year-old Cuban baseball.
The years came from nowhere
Through the radio:

Those were radio days,
When the sun shone warmly,
Pleasantly, on supple skin,
Wearing shirt clean enough to work in,
And trousers fashionably rolled.

When the nights grew long and cold,
In between heartache and strife,
At the kitchen said his wife:
You grow old, you grow old,
You shall wear the bottom of your trousers rolled.
Therefore, mend them; let me mend them.

Still, the radio brought no news
Of the fences left to mend,
Of the wars the years would send,
Of the years that time would spend
To bring a body round the bend
Into the last inning.

One night,
With the heavens above spinning,
Came the announcer’s voice, grinning:
Good night to all, and to all a good night.
But before then, though without sight,
Let us hear the beginning,
Of that time in the inning
When the ball was sent spinning
Out past fences that never need mending,
Where we can write our own ending
And our games are played in the light.