Football Poets

A Combine Harvester with Lawrie Sanchez

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Shortly after he was relieved of his duties,
I arranged to meet Lawrie Sanchez in a restaurant
within reasonable distance of Leatherhead.
Having regaled us with his thoughts on an array
of subjects- including post-apartheid South Africa-
he settled down to order a Combine Harvester
and Rocky Horror. He began to talk about commerce,
Paradise Lost, the fall of the angels, the primary causes
and avoided ramifications of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
helicopters, theories of education, genealogies
of American presidents, textiles, notable embolisms,
the demise of Juventus, sandwich fillings that work for him,
canal networks, Chinese language, history, civilisation,
customs, cities, food, religion, relationship with Japan,
topography, populations, myths and legends, the calendar
and significance of the years, its perceived industrial potential
and ascendancy, the physiognomy of peoples
from the various provinces and histories of its emperors,
their inner longings and political legacies;
chocolate, poison, West Ham United, The Dead Sea Scrolls,
the politics of the Holy Land, Jerusalem, democracy,
herbs and spices, travelling peoples, the whole nature
of death and what it means to be alive, wine and beer,
the prominent coffee growing nations
and their economic histories, football, the domestic sphere,
the reunification of Germany in 1990 and the stories of migrants,
Africa, Maths awards, South American Literature
and the concept of the border, the science of life at the poles,
bird migration and the peculiar nature and breeding habits of swifts,
cultures now defunct, histories of tribal peoples
scantly documented, the essence of trade and currency,
space travel, sea life, the configurations of the planets,
glue, the ubiquity of dust and the nature of wood panelling,
horticulture, times and seasons, industry, the biblical plagues
and their contemporary significance, salt, architecture
from neolithic times to the present, photography, Islam,
stone henge, folk music, the beginnings of English law
and the concept of equity, the transience of life and memory,
the nature of time, its standardisation and anomalies,
the history of philosophy and the great civilisations,
theology and the origins of time and of the species,
migration, geology and the evolution of language,
art and cinema, the beginnings of the printing press,
the communications revolution and our ever-changing eco systems,
that 1988 header past Bruce Grobbelaar,
sex, dogs, Lokomotiv Moscow and the salad cart

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