Football Poets

Pelé- the great one passes

We knew it would happen
But we couldn’t be sure when
It was the day football
Might have been dreading
A dark pall of depression
Hovers over the Beautiful Game
Pele, the master of over all
Dies amid a welter of superlatives
He once surveyed
Transcending over all
Appropriate verbs
Defying any explanation
The worthiest of places
In the game’s Pearly Gates
Pele, a Brazilian expressionist
Impressionist, surrealist,
The most astonishing ability
Majesty, grace, amid the game’s
Most elevated sainthood
Santos, through and through
1,000s of goals at the highest
Echelons, anointed for grandeur
Purity, an Adonis of
Gorgeously proportioned physique
Balance and poise of gymnastic
Perfection, feet like the piano keys
Of the most musical concert
The most impeccably tuned violins
Sweeping across the grass
The natural speed of a panther
Lampooning defenders, satirising
Their every thought pattern
Dancing the fandango again
Then in the 1970 World Cup
Pele, waxed with over indulgence
Dummying Uruguyan goalkeepers
A player of bookish lyricism
Every pass like a Dickensian sentence
Always flowing across the pages of our
Imagination, a flick of the brush
With left and right foot
Dabbing with simple designs
And then the iconic moments of our lives
The pass of majestic impertinence to Carlos
Alberto that belonged in the National
Portrait Gallery. Take that D’Artagnan
Stroking the ball square as if
From the deepest recesses of
The most erudite memory
Oblivious of the pomp and ceremony
Then from the kick off in 1970
World Cup proceedings against
The Czechs, Edson weighed up
The trajectories and geometries
Of possibility
Let’s try to score from the half way
Line, the ball floated like a child’s balloon
Through breathless space and time
And with the keeper beaten
Drops agonisingly wide
Another moment of visual beauty
Complete and conclusive, finalised
A staggering tour de force
And finally during the mid 1970s
The New York Cosmos lent
Its lucrative hand to Edson
From the sorcerer’s feet
Where Pele met Beckenbauer
And Bobby, the supreme one
Of English 66 World Cup appointment
It all must have seemed
An anti climactic showbiz
Charade and a parody
Of how history had been so
Good to Pele
A cosmetic exercise in
Brash, cheer-leading American
Pom poms but the USA
Bid a fond farewell to
The beatific Pele
With a perfect send off
We love the Americans
And despite the violent
Thuggery and vicious
Assault on the Brazilian
Maestro in English 66
World Cup abomination
Pele remains
And will always be
Praised to the highest
Cobalt blue skies
Richly acknowledged
By football academia
As the greatest, the
Best, unsurpassable
Almost beyond mastery
Immaculate,
Genius is a work of art
And Pele reaches
A gallery of the
Exquisitely gifted
His idyllic place
That celestial seat
At the top table
A celebration of
Everything that
Was his definitive
Signature
On the Beautiful Game

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