"The Crowd at the Ball Game" by William Carlos Williams, 1923

From The Dial, 75:2 (August, 1923).

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of 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, 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