The Last Tango

A World Cup Poem

The Last Tango

Spain won the final against Argentina,
one goal, in the hundred and sixth minute,
and that's how a World Cup closes,
one that started with the word goodbye
before anyone had said it out loud.

Messi sat on the grass,
alone, for a while,
while everyone else celebrated in another language.
Thirty nine years old,
six World Cups,
and that kind of crying that doesn't need to explain itself.

Ronaldo already said it plainly,
this was the last one, even though the cup never came,
and he leaves at peace,
crying but standing.

And us, the ones from Panama,
we know how to do something different.
When we qualified,
people went out honking their horns for no reason,
hanging a flag from a balcony that doesn't even have a pole,
crying in the living room like we'd just won it all,
just for being there,
for getting to say our name on the same list
where it says Argentina, Spain, Brazil.

They say the fall of the great
is the party of the mediocre.
I'd rather watch a thirty nine year old man
cry sitting on grass that isn't his
and think that crying
is worth more than a hundred jokes from the couch.

A generation is leaving.
What they did stays.
And someday a kid in Buenos Aires,
in Lisbon, in Panama City,
is going to say "I saw him play"
and that's going to be enough, forever.