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Gone But Not Forgotten

Richard Williams

Monday, February 24th, 2025

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 There’s a new build housing estate
in all our cities and towns.
On sites of factories and warehouses
for stuff we don’t make any more.
Places of toil, unloved and forgotten
working all hours just to pay some bills.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 But there’s others that maybe look the same,
where street signs hint of something else.
No bucolic names of rural plants,
or trees where there’s none for miles around,
but footballers whose time has passed,
a nod to what was here before.

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Maybe a blue plaque on a wall outside,
or a silver disc for a centre spot,
by a playground where today’s kids act out
their own superhero or sporting dreams,
lifted from TV, streaming, or a latest film,
voices bouncing off unweathered walls.

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 But in gardens both near and miles away,
You’ll find plastic seats ripped out from stands,
from a pitch invasion at the final game,
turf grass in pots on windowsills,
and boxes of programmes from a now lost ground,
that only lives on in the memory of fans,

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 and former players who occasionally
shuffle these roads to reminisce,
to work out where the goals once stood,
take an imaginary kick at an imaginary ball,
watch the bulging net, the crowd go wild,
before turning slowly to walk away.

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 Yet sometimes here on unsettled days,
when rain beats down and the wind lets rip,
whipping round walls and pulling at roofs,
a sound will rise as the air pressure falls,
a crescendo now unmistakably so,
of thousands of voices cheering a goal.

Notes

First published in the programme for the rearranged Portsmouth v Millwall fixture – I’d written an article about Millwall’s earlier grounds so wrote this poem to go along with it.

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/gone-but-not-forgotten-3/

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