The Crowd At the Ball Game - William Carlos Williams

The Crowd at the Ball Game
By William Carlos Williams

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit os uselessness
which delights them -

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius -

all to no end save beauty
the eternal -

So in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

for this
to be warned against

saluted and defied -
It is alive and venomous

it smiles grimly
its words cut -

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it -

The Jew gets it straight - it
is deadly, terrifying -

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives

day by day in them
idly -

This is
the power of their faces

It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail

permanently, seriously
without thought.