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April 15th 1989

Eddie Cooney

Wednesday, October 21st, 2015

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 This sea of red
Contrasts the blues of the sky
It feels like summer is on the way
The boot and the ball
The sound of rattling woodwork
With a leap of faith I enter the fray

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 The devil in blue
Has the conscience of Kelvin Mackenzie
As the devil behind
Steals the breath from my lungs

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 They’re killing us, Bruce
They’re killing us
Tell them to open the gate

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 The Liverpool roar
Turns as deathly as silence
As a thousand lungs turn to cement I am no more
Strange this death without violence
Who is to blame? To what extent?

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 The devil in his tower
Has the conscience of Kelvin Mackenzie
He thinks we’ll pee on the angels
He thinks we’ll steal from the dead

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 But they’re killing us, Bruce
They’re killing us
Please tell them to open the gate

© Eddie Cooney 2012

Notes

Not a poem. Rather a song lyric. I don’t like any of the songs written about Hillsborough. I find them tacky and cliché-ridden. I started writing this in the 1990s but never finished it. Revisions I made mean nothing of my original ideas remain in the finished work.

I wanted to write something hard-hitting and touched by of the horror of the day. When I read testimonies of eye witnesses I was struck by the dichotomy in them. There is conflict and confusion. Some people describe the police as devils for pushing them back into the crowd as they tried to escape while others describe them as angels who rescued them from the deadly melee. A Peter Beardsley shot hit the woodwork and some of those still trying to get in pushed forward. It is theorised by some that this was the moment when the first fans died. I didn’t want to let the main devils off the hook so David Duckenfield is ‘the devil in his tower’ and The Sun is represented by its editor.

With most of the verses finished the work came to another halt but when I read Bruce Grobbelaar’s biography and his traumatic memories of the day I finished the song in a day or so. The melody to this song was written after the words were finished. There were many previous versions in many different styles but the finished version is a folk song.

Editor Note:Hey Eddie. Great to meet you at the Forest Green v Tranmere match .Amazing to see 480 away fans traveling to the Cotswold hills from so far away in the National League.

It would be great to hear and feature the song. Have you recorded it? Anything on your Facebook page? .You Tube? Sound Cloud? Do email us a link if anything..Thank You. This will of course be added to the extensive and ever growing Hillborough poems here.

Good luck v Lincoln in the Cup. Like I said we’ve got the mighty Margate away, so we could meet a sticky rock ending live on BT at lunchtime…ouch! Keep on. Crispin and the Lllama Boys of Nailsworth.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/april-15th-1989/?shared=email&msg=fail