Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CO-OPERATION, by RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

CO-OPERATION, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: He had not made the team. The ultimate moment
Last Line: This was his victory: he had made the team!
Alternate Author Name(s): Young, Sanborn, Mrs.
Variant Title(s): Revelation
Subject(s): Sports


He had not made the team. The ultimate moment --
Last practice for the big game, his senior year --
Had come and gone again with dizzying swiftness.
It was all over now, and the sudden cheer
That rose and swelled to greet the elect eleven
Sounded his bitter failure on his ear.

He had not made the team. He was graduating:
The last grim chance was gone, and the last hope fled;
The final printed list tacked up in the quarters;
A girl in the bleachers turned away her head.
He knew that she was trying to keep from crying;
Under his tan there burned a painful red.

He had not made the team. The family waiting
His wire, up State; the little old loyal town
That had looked to him year by year to make it famous,
And laureled him each time home with fresh renown;
The men from the house there, tense, breathlessly watching,
And, after all, once more, he'd thrown them down.

He had not made the team, after years of striving;
After all he had paid to try, and held it cheap, --
The sweat and blood and strain and iron endurance, --
And the harassed nights, too aching-tired to sleep;
The limp that perhaps he might be cured of some day;
The ugly scar that he would always keep.

He had not made the team. He watched from the side lines,
Two days later, a part of a sad patrol,
Battered and bruised in his crouched, blanketed body,
Sick and sore to his depths, and aloof in dole,
Until he saw the enemy's swift advancing
Sweeping his team-mates backward. Then from his soul
Was cleansed the sense of self and the sting of failure,
And he was one of a pulsing, straining whole,
Bracing to stem the tide of the on-flung bodies,
Helping to halt that steady, relentless roll;
Then he was part of a fighting, frenzied unit
Forcing them back and back and back from the goal.
There on the side lines came the thought like a whipcrack
As his team rallied and rose and took control:

He had not made the team, but for four long seasons,
Each of ten grinding weeks, he had given the flower,
The essence, and strength of body brain, and spirit,
He and his kind -- the second team -- till the power
To cope with opposition and to surmount it
Into the team was driven against this hour!

What did it matter who held fast to the leather,
He or another? What was a four-years' dream?
Out of his heart the shame and rancor lifted;
There burst from his throat a hoarse, exultant scream.
Not in the fight, but part of it, he was winning!
This was his victory: he had made the team!





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