The Kicking of Balls
Tony Magistrale
Had lunch today with my friend Tony the poet who gave me permission to reproduce one of his poems just accepted into the Harvard Review. It’s part of a new collection – not yet published – titled “The Last Soldiers of Love” and I reproduce it below. Tony won the Bordighera Poetry Price for 2007 (for contemporary Italian American Writing).
THE KICKING OF BALLS
Precisely when the bells chime four
on the clock tower above us, the St. Sephtan’s
school door opens and boys and girls
freshly pressed from today’s lessons
spill out into the bright Bavarian sunlight.
The boys are all sporadic motion and sound,
voices lifting with their feet
to the movement of colored soccer balls,
heads full of floppy hair
that never stop bouncing. The girls,
more discreet and self-contained,
exit together in twos and threes
arms often intertwined, talking neatly
among themselves. And so it goes
each gender ignores the other,
each has its own established rhythms,
rules for non-engagement. It’s a wonder
we ever get together
at all, boys hesitating long enough
to find interest in something other than
the kicking of balls, girls overcoming their
revulsion for the raucous noise of boys.
But we do find a way eventually
to break free from our tribes,
cross over to the other side
and co-exist. At least for a little while
until the clock tower chimes again
and it’s time to go home.