• By
Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, February 14, 2014.


“This one is examining the way that the color commentators turn something quite violent and vigorous into something dainty and delicate by their adjectives,” Dawes said in an email. “I have been watching the men’s long program.”

Here’s his latest poem.





First the blood spreads and blackens

under the nails, then in days the hard

epidermis can be pulled off, leaving

the red stained under-skin and a bruise

that will bleed after the next leap.

The skater’s pain is a constant worrying pulse—

no one sees these marks of the flagellant,

no one must know the carnage of their art.

The color commentator’s adjectives

flop open like embroidered sheets

over the rough grunts and the crunch

of muscle and bone.  What do they

know of elegance, gorgeousness,

beauty, artistry, purity, grace in these

tortured bodies, their hearts pushing

against ribs, their skin purpling with

the scars of the brute discipline

they impose on their bodies? Those

other gladiators—skiers with their expletives

and growls at the top of the slope,

or the stocky snow borders, or the stern

faced time racers on the speed rink—

they are given and they keep power,

force, grit, athletic, guts, full gas

words they wear as garlands,

and no one demands of them that

heaving show-tunes smile, edged

with absurd pain, the arms arched just so,

the sequins winking, the crowds

desperate to scatter roses across

the ice as if it is bleeding from the cross-stitch

of cicatrices, while the commentators

sigh: Gorgeous! Gorgeous! Oh, so gorgeous!

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