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Another Christmas In Iraq

Crispin Thomas

Friday, December 8th, 2006

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 another Christmas in Iraq
and how far have we come
the dead increase and hope and peace
are ever on the run

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 I’d love to think naively
that football might entwine
our soldiers and our battered hosts
as in another time

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 but just like all those years ago
we find ourselves again
involved in this embittered war
destroying fellow men

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 no Christmas truce nor sharing bread
no trench nor gun-less team
could turn this endless nightmare
into some yuletide dream

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 think then as you tune in or watch
some festive Christmas game
that for so many miles away
it cannot be the same

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 this game we love reminds us how
we’re so far from it all
whatever faith we’ll always be
just creatures great and small

© CT06

Notes

*Early forms of the game of football in Iraq can be traced as far back as 4,000 years ago through the trade relations between Mesopotamia, which means “the land between two rivers” in Greek and the ancient Chinese civilisation, where one of the earliest forms of football, known as “cuju” or “to kick a ball” was first understood to have began. Their has been some evidence of modern football having been played in Iraq in the 1800s or even earlier, this comes from a painting found by Iraqi historians in the city of Nafar, west of Afak in the province of Al-Qadissiya (then known as Al-Diwaniya) in 1977. The historians placed the date of the painting, which consisted of a standing human being and in front of him was a another person with a ball in the motion of kicking the ball, in the era of the 19th century, this painting demonstrated that football was being played before the British Mandate in 1914.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/another-christmas-in-iraq/