Erik Muller’s poem for Civic Stadium
A POEM ON CIVIC STADIUM
Note: Han Yu (768-824) wrote the supplicatory “A Poem on the Stone Drums” because he wanted
the elaborately carved stones preserved from the elements and vandalism. From The Jade Mountain, Witter Bynner’s translation serves as the inspiration for this Civic poem; in fact, it provides substance, sequence, even lines for this adaptation more than eleven hundred years after Han Yu.
Scott handed me this photo of the field,
Beseeching me to write about Civic Stadium.
George Hitchcock is tired. James Hall is dead.
What can my poor talent do for Civic Stadium?
. . . When the Depression’s grip loosened,
When the next world war was beginning to brew,
Oregon’s Works Progress Administration
Started building a metropolitan stadium, a hub
For games and the crowds that cheered them.
Signatures on plans allowed funds to flow
To hire carpenters, engineers, quartermasters
To marshal materials, especially wooden beams
From Doug fir felled in the Coast Range,
Tall and straight to support a dream,
Leveled where they grew against a jutting cliff,
Washed by rain, baked by sun, scorched by wildfire.
Where could Scott have found this photo,
True to the moment, not altered by a hair,
The focus deep, not difficult to read?
Greg Luzinski rounds third for home
The year he led the Pacific Coast League.
Looking at this image, I see the years
Have not diminished the stadium’s grandeur,
Nor dampened the enthusiasm of fans
Who wore more straw hats than we do now.
Behind the base path action, the crowd,
Restless as the ocean, seethes and sways,
Its roar breaking like a comber on rocks,
Like a sharp wind in treetops surging
As one timber, then the next, splinters and drops,
Like three Southern Pacific diesels straining on grade.
Historians writing about our time will not
Neglect to include this stadium, its magnet
Drawing thousands, its infield green
The commons where our thoughts graze
To fatten and grow thick wool
In the surety of being one flock.
I who am fond of antiquity am born too late
To see the fir beams rise and settle in place
For grandstands facing east and south.
I came after Luzinski and the Philly stars,
Though I recall a friend of mine
Who saw their games, sat below
The highflying roof, stared down
Into pooled light of an evening game,
While players tensed, fidgeted, sped,
As the palm-held white leather ball
Was fired, swung at, and lofted
Through a summer everyone owned,
Maybe a homer for us, maybe a catch at the wall.
I remember when Vince and I debated
Whether one could write a good baseball poem.
If he lived here, he would add to the clamor
Of fans who love Civic Stadium,
Who respond to its tide of sounds,
To its community of carefree fun.
What if we had a monarch who commanded
Civic to be saved, restored, expanded,
Engaging university faculty and students
As designers, landscapers, re-builders!
We fear the inertia of our leaders,
Their slavish search for precedents,
Their shying away from investment.
Do they forget the city let the schools
Take Civic for one dollar? Then let a judge
Assign it back even if never used again,
Even if like the downtown Park Blocks
With classic courthouse and grand hotel,
It might be leveled, swapped out
For the new, which speculators concoct
With their eye on cash and fashion,
Lots of flanking glass or a skin
Of impermeable metal, impregnable
To time or protest. Shouldn’t
More people care about our stadium?
Can poets make a din? What petition
Should be made? To whom? Forgive
My voice, hoarse in this song of
The times and timbers of Civic Stadium,
Sounding a supplication choked with its own tears.
Erik Muller
Eugene, November 2009
