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For Jack and Jill, read Alex and Arsene

Apollo Gees

Wednesday, June 18th, 2003

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Up to the top of the Premiership table
they climbed on the back of great results.
Roared on by partisan crowds
neutral or not, everyone exults.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 And the noise grew longer and louder
as chords struck raw nerves;
mind games were played and won –
the kind every tabloid lurves.

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Up to the very heights they went;
and though too many a word they say,
their goals outnumbered a poet’s love-songs
in the first green weeks of May.

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 The stealthy shadows of fate crept closer,
clutching at the hem of their shirts;
and there at the very top they stumbled,
but only the Gunners know how much it hurts.

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 Smarting, they decree themselves the best,
citing many displays, so beautifully crafted;
but they bemoan a perceived injustice –
and a sense of being shafted.

© Apollo Gees, june 2003

Notes

a comment on the enthralling finish to the
2002 / 2003 English Premiership season

apologies to Louis Untermeyer, anthologist and poet, 1885 – 1977
this is an adaptation of his poem ‘Walter de la Mare Tells His Listeners About Jack and Jill’

the very cleverly crafted innuendo of the original poem, is lost in this translation / adaptation,
but that’s ok if we go by the cliché :
‘football is better than sex’

plus, a nod to Clik the mouse’s poem :
‘Utd & Arsenal, neck and neck 2003’

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/for-jack-and-jill-read-alex-and-arsene/