Home page

Famous Reporter 37

Currajah

 

GEOFF PAGE

---

    The Five-Set Match

                                                                             for Alan Gould

 

Don't dismiss it all at once

because it's sweat and competition.

 

There's actually a novel here,

brought by stages to fruition,

 

complete with matters of morale,

the break point and the breaking back,

 

the foxy strategies and tactics,

the way each rally must contract

 

until its options have expired:

the hopeful lob that brings a smash,

 

the unforced error at the net

when one protagonist grows rash.

 

Tennis is a metaphor

for courtly battles to the death

 

fought in front of serried knights

whose fate awaits their hero's breath.

 

Five-set characters acquire

the depth that's brought them to this court:

 

the one slim chance they had in childhood,

the injuries last season brought,

 

the sad romantic ups and downs

via a wild besotted press,

 

the arguments with coach or parent

adding to a slow distress.

 

A five-set match is like an epic,

the Iliad or Odyssey;

 

each game becomes another canto

written on a troubled sea.

 

Such matches have the amplitude

we look for in a narrative;

 

they too refuse the certainties

a novelist declines to give.

 

So next time, Alan, don't switch off.

Attention: Memo from a Friend.

 

When next you see a five-set match,

be sure to read it end the end.

---

Geoff Page is an Australian poet who has published eighteen collections of poetry as well as two novels, four verse novels and several other works including anthologies, translations and a biography of the jazz musician, Bernie McGann. His latest poetry collection is Seriatim, [Salt Publishing, UK 2007].