pick, pack, puck, pock

"The fellows were practising long shies and bowling lobs and slow
twisters. In the soft grey silence he could hear the bump of the
balls: and from here and from there through the quiet air the sound
of the cricket bats: pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a
fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl." *


Tea in the pavilion,
oiled bats, white trousers
with a crease, dear boy:
England’s true gift
to the sporting world
is an analogy, an elegy
of Empire. Taken up
by barefoot niggers
and Australian diggers
who beat the pants off the Poms
in spite of bodyline bowling.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
temporise, complain, indeed you must,
but you are thumped, these days,
in every single thrilling sport
you ever invented: football,
rugby, even bloody badminton,
and, of course, dear wistful cricket.

Added to this
in a rather English twist,
the news announces a crime most foul,
an oddly seamless cheek by jowl
take on a tale by Agatha Christie.
I could not, in conscience, make this up:
but, unless the news has missed me,
MURDER at the Cricket World Cup?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6484187.stm

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* -- James Joyce, the last two sentences of Chapter One of "A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man".
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