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Bird in Hand

Richard Williams

Saturday, February 6th, 2021

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Bird in Hand

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 The FA Cup 1939 – 2008

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 We drink in the presence of greatness.
A glorious bird of paradise
that fills the room with life.
Wanderers to Portsmouth all roads between,
a coach trip ride through hedge-screened fields.

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 This monochrome world that we engraved
as so many lives were sliding past.
Waiting for the blackout to end,
as if nothing we did really mattered,
as if watching was all that there was.

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 So we taped up all the windows,
made do with any small victory,
turned out the lights and kept quiet.
As the radio spat static and crackled,
keeping our hopes in the dark.

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 And here we are only nine months on,
a country pub where they kept it safe
for five lost years as the city burned,
payloads emptied on a scrap of earth.
Abide with me all flags at half mast.

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 Abide with me and a sea of blue.
Wembley stadium and Kanu scores,
forty-something men so close to tears,
my daughters and I in our Pompey shirts.
The final whistle on a perfect day.

8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 And here we are on the journey home,
brilliant colours will fade to none,
as the flags we carry are furled away.
Like Tommy Rowe at ninety-two
leaving all thoughts in the dark.

9 Leave a comment on verse 9 0 So drink to the presence of greatness,
for everything you do really matters.
Enjoy all of your victories.
Turn on the lights and sing out,
for living is all that there is.

Notes

Wanderers were the first winners of the FA Cup. Tommy Rowe was the last member of the Portsmouth ’39 team to die. Abide with Me is sung at the start of every FA Cup Final, and often at remembrance day services.

In 2008 Pompey won the FA Cup for the first time since 1939. During the course of the war, the trophy travelled around various safe houses, eventually ending up at the Bird in Hand pub in Lovedean, where it was kept above the bar for three years. In 2009 the trophy went back there for one night of celebration, and I was lucky enough to be in attendance, (there is a photo of me on a hard drive somewhere holding the FA Cup).

The poem is about that evening, and about that sunny spring day in 2008 when the cup was won again after a gap of 69 years. It’s also about my home town of Portsmouth, and how much it suffered between 1939 and 1945.

It first appeared in South Poetry Magazine, appears in my first poetry collection (Landings) , and can also be found placed online on the Places in Poetry map on the Bird in Hand pub in Lovedean, a few miles north of Portsmouth.

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/bird-in-hand/