You were breast-stroking length after length
of the rooftop pool you had to yourself
at seven o’clock in Los Angeles in the rain,
a lovely, soft sort of Californian rain,
and I was wandering with mat-axe and spade,
keeping myself out of the mental home
by breaking sod, loosening clay, taking out stone,
planting plum saplings in the flurries of snow

while The Convent of Mercy, Roscommon
and The Convent of Mercy, Claremorris
were going at each other like a pair of trains
at The Sportsground in the gales of wind,
giving no quarter and expecting none,
putting in tackles they’d rehearsed in dreams,
out-jumping and out-lifting and out-running,
rucking and mauling like women possessed.

It doesn’t matter in the slightest who won.
We only want to look at their joyous faces
and would have known absolutely nothing,
had Laszlo Geczo not been assigned
to cross the raging Shannon and attend
with his long sports lenses and expert eye,
of the unbridled delight, the absolute despair,
of the emptied tanks and the very last ounce.

The tenderest photo is the one where Laszlo
has got down on his knees as if to pray
before the whole panel gathered on the ground.
They take their turns to hold the silver prize,
to cherish that moment, and then pass it on.
I cannot get over the love on their faces.
The cup they pass between them is their lives.

Tom French’s most recent collection is Company (Gallery Press)