Dick Bird's New Zealand cricket poems

As is often the case once an anthology is completed, an editor comes across material that was missed. Recently I bought a collection of poems and writings by New Zealand poet Dick Bird, an emigrant from England, privately published in 1984. I found two more cricket poems amongst his collected newspaper poetry. Here they are for your pleasure:

DICK BIRD

Untitled

In these toilsome, troubled times

There are international crimes

Which may cause an Englishman to raise his brow,

Things like famine, fire and food

And revolutions, spilling blood,

These are things he understands and will allow.

But what he cannot tolerate

Is one filled with hate

That he deserves no place upon this earth,

Understanding not the cricket

He mutilates the wicket

By digging into spots of sacred turf.

Such crime is so unreasonable

It’s definitely unseasonable

Without the slightest wit of rhyme or reason

No-one could be that bad

Unless, of course, he’s mad,

I mean to say – this is the cricket season.

Well Bowled, Sir

There was an age in times serene

When cricket on the village green

Was a gentle game, all vicars, tea and tents.

But we’ve left that age behind

And the game today, we find,

Is much more warlike, savage and intense.

Today each bowler must have pace,

He must show he hates the human race,

He must also love the art of bodyline.

So that each express rip-snorter

Will cut off the batsman’s water

Or at least push all his ribs back through his spine.

He must giggle, grin and chuckle

As he sees each batsman buckle,

Be convinced each ball will triumph over bat.

And when his victim’s lying prone,

Just survey each broken bone.

Then smile and quietly ask, “Howzat.”

Poems © Dick Bird

(from Dick Bird’s Writing and Poems, 1984)

Dick Bird (1925-84), was born in Tottenham, London, England, and emigrated to New Zealand in July 1950. He worked for Railways Workshop, Woburn, Lower Hutt, and then moved to Auckland where he was married in 1951. He spent 33 of his 34 New Zealand years working for the Post Office and living in various areas of New Zealand with his wife and children. He published his poetry in a regular newspaper column for a regional (probably North Island) newspaper. His writings were posthumously published by his family as a memorial in 1984 after he died from cancer.