LUCY-LOCKETT.(Poem)

 
   The champion runner of intermediate 
   was burly, unlikely Lucy Lockett. 
   The two-twenty, the quarter-mile and half, 
   never by much but by just enough 
   of something bothered and desperate, 
   so whitely, so ungainly, so travailed, 
   Lucy Lockett took the field. 
 
   His legs were solid and his torso barrelled, 
   and a worry-frown centred his hewn head. 
   When he took his hom-rimmed glasses off 
   he rubbed his eyes with a handkerchief 
   like an old man whose eyes water in the sun. 
 
   For somehow his physique was bundled into life 
   before anyone thought to quite finesse it. 
   He was decent, popular and we called him Luce, 
   and when he triumphed and the crowd roared, 
   he looked at ...