Loyal obedience to the rules jointly defined
and freely accepted.
-Albert Camus, on why his true lessons
in morality came from sports
Lucky that we didn't know the games we played
were teaching us about boundaries
and integrity; it would have smacked of school,
we who long for recess. And lucky- when exiled
to right field, or not chosen at all-
we didn't know the lesson was injustice,
just how much of it we could tolerate.
But always there'd be the boys
who never got it, calling foul after foul
there wasn't, marking with an X spot
where the ball didn't hit.
Where are they now? What are they doing?
Lucky that some of us who loved recess
came to love school,
found the books that gave us a few words
for what the aggrieved already knew. Lucky
that within rules
freely accepted we came to recognize a heart
can be ferocious, a mind devious and fair.
