By Miša Klimeš: ‘Now whoever has the courage and a strong and a collected spirit in his breast, let him come forward, lace up the gloves and put his hands up.’ Virgil
Boxers are nomads trekking
through mental deserts,
they are forced to find themselves or lose.
They must bridge valleys
with rivers slicing a wound
through the landscape below them
and so they must attempt
to reach the clouds where all gods are supposed to be
and try to harness a similar power…
Except these people are not gods
although they engage in the Herculean;
perhaps they are half-human and half-god
with immortal wills trapped
in mortal bodies which glisten
while lungs heave.
The fighter hones himself
through the hum of a skipping rope.
This is a blacksmith forging a mind
into a blade that has to cut down
any barbarian on the battlefield.
Skipping is also the search for balance:
Arm must be leg and leg must be arm
because the body is looking for its own rhythm.
Running makes the boxer strive for
the stamina of a wolf migrating
across a snow beaten loneliness.
Boxing is a loneliness too
and any warrior must expose their physique
to the ritualistic elements:
Sweat is rain,
the air knocked out of you is wind,
fatigue is the drought everywhere,
the adrenalin is an avalanche
and when these are overcome, pride
is the middle finger tossed
at the odds.
Chasing one’s own shadow is essential as well
since one is following the elusive doppelganger
cast from light
blackening against the body
which places an eclipse on the wall,
revealing the shy monster living
in the almost unreachable caves
of the self – the deepest catacombs of oceans
where seemingly alien creatures lie,
not supposed to be part our world.
Sparring is the last internship before
a march into the ring
with a crowd screaming, booing
and cheering from a medieval time
we rather forget
with our ancestors yelling through us:
Their voices tell us of the harshness they were born from
but we have lost.
*****
These days I look at boxing
through the wrong end of the binoculars
that shrinks the sport to a little figure –
A man
with a feckless grin
remembering better times,
tasting stale beer
in a pub underused for years
reading tabloid’s back pages
where a fight report is a rare patch
of countryside squeezed
between the cities of football and cricket.
He surveys its fragmentation
thinking only pockets of it will remain
and grow slimmer each year.
His thoughts wander through the Hall of Fame holding the fragile past.
All the great names are there:
Ali, Dempsey, Duran, Louis, Robinson.
They are empires which have come and gone.
Their auras rule our imaginations and dazzle us
for the reason that they climbed personal mountains
and sometimes each other
as they left flags on high peaks,
left records behind like all the big civilisations
and were Caesars, Alexanders and Hannibals
in their own periods of history,
their achievements became landmarks
for the future fighters to navigate their own way
through a vast world.
This world is now indifferent to their glory.
My passion is a film reel replaying Joe Frazier
arch a left-hook into Ali’s face
that floors him for those eternal seconds.
Ali becomes a ghost
as he moves with the subtlety
of a ballet dancer past William’s fists.
Duran sweats the age off his body
like a slave throws off their chain
as he defeats the giant in Barkley,
Gomez is an encircled army holding out
against the better army in Sanchez
even though he is losing.
Hagler and Hearns force
the other to shudder
with inexcusable violence.
Henry Armstrong moves
with a work rate no one can fathom,
his heart was bigger than most men
yet I also see Ali
too battle-scarred to talk
shaking from all the punches he absorbed,
Marciano being retired
too early by his plane crash
and losing his undefeated record.
Liston all alone
in his house with the speculation of a mafia hit
or suicide persisting forever
and I think of all the those fighters who have fallen,
too many to remember or name
with Louis taxed into poverty,
he was a doorman in the end
and crooked promoters bend us
to their own will,
forcing fights onto fans they never wanted
and do not want
but I cannot let go of my faith
and I have a vision of an exile returning to his home
and a champion lifting his world title
at a clapping crowd
and our damaged god Ali marching
with the Olympic flame,
defying everyone’s expectations again
yet not his own.
I think boxing is as strong as him:
Flawed but still ready for the challenge,
hurt yet prepared to struggle on,
down but not counted out
and even though it has its civil wars,
it will come together again
and the wounds will heal.
Our land must find new rain
that will replenish its dry rivers
which will nourish the soil’s thirst
that will grow new cycles
of birth and death.
Only then can I be the man
sitting in the pub reading
the paper with a smile on my face
as the next superstar stares at me.