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Poems tagged ‘1945’

The hunger

One hundred thousand,
at least, for a friendly.
The Russians were
still our friends, weren’t they?
November 1945.
So many servicemen
back from the war

hungry to watch football again.
A photo shows them
on the roof of the old
East Stand, crowding
around the goalmouth.
Moscow Dynamo presented
each Chelsea player

with a bunch of flowers.
The result, a thrilling 3-3 draw.
And my father among them,
starved of so much since
the fall of Singapore
three years before.

He always kept his
political and football affiliations
close to his chest. But I reckon
he was an Arsenal man,
when such things mattered
to him, in the Thirties.

He told us this story.
After the match the crowd
swept him off his feet
and into Walham Green tube,
even though he wasn’t
fond of trains just then.

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/news/poem-tags/1945/