At Aqueduct and Agincourt

"It is Triple Crown time again for three-year-old thoroughbred colts, beginning with the Kentucky Derby Run for the Roses at Churchill Downs won by Golden Tempo on May 2. Next comes the Preakness, at Laurel Park, Md this year while Pimlico gets rebuilt, and finally the Belmont Stakes in Saratoga temporarily for like reason. As presented on TV, the Triple Crown is a grand affair with lots of party outfits and breathless celebrations when headed for the winner’s circle.

The horses come now from stables of the very, and maybe newly, rich from here and abroad, for whom this is idle money frittered into a chance to be in the limelight, if not in the winner’s circle. They get to rub shoulders with legacy names like Calumet Farms, having stable names of their own that might have been incorporated last week.

The giveaway is a horse that was entered in the Kentucky Derby who had previously run in six races with nary a win. Let him rub shoulders, and owners too? It’s fun.

But thoroughbred racing draws a seedy and more desperate crowd, too, not the subject of TV cameras. It draws people who should be anywhere else but at a racetrack where the track cut of 15-20% dooms one over statistical time.

Our Anonymous Poet has been witness to the flip side of the TV pomp of racing. He has always suffered a smile at the use of the words “bookie” and “make book.” So, our Anonymous Poet has written from something deep within his past, his youth, his life amongst the more gritty followers of horseracing. This is what he writes:

<indent><indent>Old man who calls the Bowery home, The morning racing form his only tome, Has all these members in his court: The other players at the touting sport; But toothless he in baggy tweed Has had more time to go to seed.</indent> </indent>

<indent><indent>He peels, in a gnarled and stubby hand, From an incongruous wad, in a rubber band; A back long bent from middle years Makes it strange the way he peers - Along with all the other hods - To better grasp the tote board odds.</indent>

<indent><indent>The ancient English played another sport, With spikes and shafts at Agincourt; An army stood between the trees For hours in mud up to the knees, A soup well laced with soldiers' swill, The smell alone enough to kill.</indent>

<indent><indent>Much too dumb to know the dread, The youth is old and almost dead, And nearly buried with the sods, He also seeks to grasp the odds.

<indent><indent>The Anonymous Poet</indent>