Friday, June 09, 2006

EXCUSE ME THIS ONE INDULGENCE, POETS, BUT...

ENG--GER--LAND!

COME ON BOYS!

Do it for Bobby Moore
Do it for Pickles the Dog
Do it for Fred Garnham
standing on the terraces
at Ipswich for fifty years
Do it for John Peel's ghost
Do it for the twin towers
at the old Wembley Stadium
Do it for red phone boxes
Do it to the tune of
"God Save The Queen"
Do it for Chris Torrance's beard
Do it for blazing near-summer
days at Westfield School in the Seventies
Do it for Kenneth Wolstenholme
Do it for the choruses
of "What a load of rubbish"
that sang you off the pitch
in darker days as I lay listening
to the radio on top of my bed
Do it for the pigeons
Do it for streets strewn with dropped
kebabs on a Sunday morning
Do it for the mud, spit and cum
in the Thames
Do it for all the blokes
who love you enough to look
that dumb waving the flag of St George
Do it for the poetry of a wonderful goal
scored in impossible circumstances
when you're right at the edge of your
own endurance
Do it for the sudden breaks, the mad crosses
upfield that find the boot of their man
when nobody even knew he was there
Do it for bravery, do it for style
Do it not to be like Prime Minister Blair
with his strange lack of grandeur
and the suggestion of an impotent rage
in him
Do it Do it so I can get out of my body
look over the mountain a moment
and taste immortality before
tumbling back into the world.

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