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Nostalgia: A Snapshot of 1955

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 On Sundays after tea we kicked a ball

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Around outside until it got dark in the street,

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Maybe listened to the wireless for an hour

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 (“Take it from here” or “Journey into space”).

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 But tonight I curled myself around a book,

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 The “Big Book of Football Champions 1955”

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 In front of the fire. England versus Spain,

8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 At the palatial home of FC Real Madrid.

9 Leave a comment on verse 9 0 Evocative names – Lofthouse, Matthews, Wright

10 Leave a comment on verse 10 0 Duncan Edwards playing in front of Roger Byrne,

11 Leave a comment on verse 11 0 And Chelsea’s Bentley (scorer of the goal).

12 Leave a comment on verse 12 0 But the score for me was neither here nor there.

13 Leave a comment on verse 13 0 It was the crowd,

14 Leave a comment on verse 14 0 The crowd I saw, soaring.

15 Leave a comment on verse 15 0 Someone took a photo behind the goal

16 Leave a comment on verse 16 0 Of a blonde Yorkshireman called Albert

17 Leave a comment on verse 17 0 Quixall, his gaze going heavenward

18 Leave a comment on verse 18 0 As the ball flies up into the higher realms

19 Leave a comment on verse 19 0 Above the grada, the gradería, the tribuna mayor

20 Leave a comment on verse 20 0 Where the aficionados gaze down like emperors

21 Leave a comment on verse 21 0 Making opulent cigar-gestures, and their smoke

22 Leave a comment on verse 22 0 Is borne aloft into the Castillian sky,

23 Leave a comment on verse 23 0 While we watch fixtures trudging through the rain

24 Leave a comment on verse 24 0 And peer round pillars beneath corrugated roofs

25 Leave a comment on verse 25 0 On English grounds.

26 Leave a comment on verse 26 0 I close the book quietly

27 Leave a comment on verse 27 0 And dream of Spain.

Notes

In May 1955 England drew 1-1 at the Bernabeu with a Spanish side

including Gento, and Kubala. In October of that year, England won

the return fixture at Wembley 4-1, with goals from Bill Perry (2), John

Atyeo, and Sir Tom Finney.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/nostalgia-a-snapshot-of-1955/