Dream of a Baseball Star

I dreamed Ted Williams leaning at night against the Eiffel Tower, weeping. He was in uniform and his bat lay at his feet - knotted and twiggy. 'Randall Jarrell says you're a poet! ' I cried. 'So do I! I say you're a poet! ' He picked up his bat with blown hands; stood there astraddle as he would in the batter's box, and laughed! flinging his schoolboy wrath toward some invisible pitcher's mound - waiting the pitch all the way from heaven. It came; hundreds came! all afire! He swung and swung and swung and connected not one sinker curve hook or right-down-the middle. A hundred strikes! The umpire dressed in strange attire thundered his judgment: YOU'RE OUT! And the phantom crowd's horrific boo dispersed the gargoyles from Notre Dame. And I screamed in my dream: God! throw thy merciful pitch! Herald the crack of bats! Hooray the sharp liner to left! Yea the double, the triple! Hosannah the home run!