In those days, the hard days,
fighters were celebrants, heroes of tough times--
the "Heavyweight Champion of the World"
the toughest guy of all the guys

and my father loved Joe Louis and Katherine Hepburn
an unlikely combination you might say but what it was
was that they both had class and my father wore
a homburg hat fine cotton shirts made to order
and smoked good cigars admired class and Louis
a quiet man quick very fast for a heavyweight
a punch like a bolt of lightning had it

and my father took me to the fights in Laurel Gardens
in the old part of Newark the wrought-iron columns
girders and truss work of the building painted green
the dank encumbered air a greenish thick
fog of smoke the ring aflood in cones of hot white light
shaped by green shades

and up there inside the ropes the glistening hard-muscled
bodies of the fighters the bell the shuffle shove and clinch
thuds and answering grunts of landed punches uppercut
cross jab unstanched cuts and gashes the raucous clamorous
crowd shouting its blood-lust haymaker puts you to sleep
among the daisies-- tweet tweet-- and I remember

some of the names Maxie Fisher Freddie Cochran Tippy Larkin
Lew Jenkins Allie Stoltz-- boxers and sluggers up-and-coming
sons of immigrants risen from the tenements of New York
gritty New Jersey towns and others the down-hillers --
punchy palookas old timers ten-buck-take-a-dive artists.

the Garden's green green green.

.................................................................Israel Lewis