The Origin of Baseball, by Kenneth Patchen

Someone had been walking in and out

Of the world without coming

To much decision about anything.

The sun seemed too hot most of the time.

There weren’t enough birds around

And the hills had a silly look

When he got on top of one.

The girls in heaven, however, thought

Nothing of asking to see his watch

Like you would want someone to tell

A joke--’Time,’ they’d say, ‘what’s

That mean--time?’ laughing with the edges

Of their white mouths, like a flutter of paper

In a madhouse. And he’d stumble over

General Sherman or Elizabeth B.

Browning, muttering, ‘Can’t you keep

Your big wings out of the aisle?’ But down

Again, there’d be millions of people without

Enough to eat and men with guns just

Standing there shooting each other.

So he wanted to throw something

And he picked up a baseball.

From “City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology” edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. (City Lights: $18.95; 257 pp.) Copyright 1995 (The pocket, of course, must be about the size of the patch pockets on your Mao jacket, big enough for dissident poetry and turnips to throw at passing politicians.) Reprinted by permission.