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Burial of the Dead

Al McClimens

Sunday, November 17th, 2019

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Burial of the Dead
(Ibrox Park, Jan. 2nd. 1971)

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Wearing Ne’erday hangovers and tricked
out in the scarves we got for Xmas,
we queued for the exit as the echo
of the equaliser clashed with the full time
whistle. I did some quick arithmetic.
Is this what the seventies will be like,
I wondered? Dave Edmunds at number one,
Ted Heath at number ten
and the Tims going for six in a row.

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 1 I could see Copland Road station outside
the stadium gates when a surge caught me,
took my legs in a heavy tackle. Referee,
I pleaded. Referee? The sponge man came on
but his magic was no match for my pains.
I was six feet under but they dug me out
and I was stretchered off by St. John’s
ambulance crew with the applause
of the crowd warm in my ears (auditory
hallucinations brought on by compressive
asphyxia). They ferried me straight to the nee-naw
and as I was on my way to the Southern
General I thought I could hear the siren (auditory
hallucinations brought on by crush injuries).

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 But when I woke I was in the morgue.
And when I looked around I saw
that I was not alone. So many. I had not
thought death had undone so many.

Notes

Editor Note: Thank you Al and Welcome to Football Poets. Too often in the shadow and wake of Hillsborough, Bradford and Heysel, your powerful and emotive lines remind us of a tragic day when 66 died and many more were injured at Ibrox .RIP

The 1971 Ibrox disaster was a crush among the crowd at an Old Firm football game, which led to 66 deaths and more than 200 injuries. It happened on 2 January 1971 in an exit stairway at Ibrox Park (now Ibrox Stadium) in Glasgow, Scotland. It was the worst British football disaster until the Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, England, in 1989.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/burial-of-the-dead/