The Hollow Team, revised [many, many Rs implied]

I posted this on another thread, but I missed the 144-minute deadline to edit, and wanted to make some changes, so I figured I'd give it it's own thread. This is my homage to 2002, the third season in a row that never happened.

I

We are the hollow team
We are the sorry team
Leaning together
Jersey filled with straw. Alas!
Our weak passes, when
We play together
Are soft and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our damp stadium


Shape without form, skill without fitness,
Paralysed force, possession without scoring;


Those who have crossed
While scoring goals, to the playoffs
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent players, but only
As the hollow team.
The stuffed team.


II


Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream stadium
These do not appear:
There, the beer is
Skunked in a broken bottle
There, is a sad section
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.


Let me be no nearer
In death's dream stadium
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Black scarf, paper sack on head, covered eyes
In the stands
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --


Not a playoff meeting
In the twilight stadium


III


This is the dead stadium
This is the baseball stadium
Here the black and red banners
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a sad fan's hand
In the shade of a fading banner.


Is it like this
In death's other stadium
Watching alone
At the hour when we are
Staggering with drunkeness
Lips that would cheer
Form prayers to fading banners.


IV


The strikers are not here
There are no strikers here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost stadium


In this last of meeting places
We drink together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the Anacostia


Sightless, unless
The strikers reappear
As the magic triangle
Goal-hungry heroes
Of death's twilight stadium
The hope only
Of empty fans.


V


Here we go round the lager keg
Lager keg lager keg
Here we go round the lager keg
At six o'clock in the evening.


Between the idea
And the goal
Between the motion
And the score
Falls the Shadow


For Thine is the Kingdom


Between the kick-off
And the victory
Between the halftime
And the celebration
Falls the Shadow


Life is very long


Between the desire
And the shot
Between the penalty
And the goal
Between the titles
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the


This is the way the season ends
This is the way the season ends
This is the way the season ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

 

I was thinking of Dante's Inferno:

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

(Least I think that's Dante...could be wrong on that one, though, as it's been quite awhile...)