Down Their Awful Hall Poem by Robert Rorabeck

You are my secret prejudice
I haven’t yet found a way to give up:
I don’t believe you actually love the
Human race,
But you sup right beneath the football
Coliseum;
It would be better if you more appreciated
Baseball,
But your hair is so perfectly auburn.
Listen to the way it swings,
Back and forth like an unhurried sea.
Even in your coffin it should swing that way.
You are like the titillating prize at the bottom
Of a crackerjack box,
The very thing I used to drive to Miami with
My father for deep after midnight,
To get my fingers sticky,
To populate my soul,
To watch the winos basking against the fire drums;
But the prizes are getting cheaper,
And night after night it gets so cold;
I know you have never really loved me,
But how can any woman really love me,
Especially the sea, or my venal muse;
When it is only the interlude between seventh period and
Halftime,
Though the traffic never abates;
It comes like rain, or like my fingers,
The way they would like to fall through your fingers;
But they don’t know you at all,
And now they pause to smoke and listen
As your echoes fade down their awful hall.