Football Poets

Hammers 1-1 after Euro League battle royale.

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Half time in Europa League
Battle royale
Quater- Final hanging
By the slenderest cotton thread
For West Ham
The smell of the French revolution
Re-enacted in an East End stockade
Digging in the trenches
But Lyon at the height of French
Fashion, jumping onto a Gallic
Passing carousel,
A bewildering fairground
Of flashing, flickering lights
One arm bandits of one touch
And two touch spinning noughts
And crosses, Lyon passing
Handsome as the Palace of the Versailles
But West Ham prepared for the French
Post Impressionist arty Lyon students
A joyous lesson in neatness and precision
Rather like the most advanced engineering
Declan Rice, Tomas Soucek, Said Benrahma
And above all Jarred Bowen
Chivalrous knights in armour
Until Cresswell who stunned on Sunday
Against Everton gets his rudest of awakenings
Sent off when the mists of uncertainty
Hung heavy over the London Stadium
Like cold blankets that fell abruptly
Across the East End like the early rains
Of spring, a chill air of foreboding
Lingers in Lyon next week
Yet even 10 men can still muster
Dutch courage if that makes any sense
Bowen, still buoyant as ever, a winner
On Sunday and once again the back
Page headline grabber, a giant of a goal
Towering over the two legged tie
Then a horrible dull thud and sinister
Sounding clump, when Dembele
Pulls back an equaliser from the precipice
When the French threatened to swarm
All over the Irons battlements
And ramparts, crushing the Hammers
With their proverbial French resistance
Now here’s the story so far
Let’s equip ourselves with stereotypical
Baguettes, appetising croissants on
Cross ferry voyages across the Channel
Be prepared for Proustian lyricism
Wondrous passages of footballing
Grandiloquence from the East End
Cradle of football, the arts and sciences
Of the Upton Park academy
Nicely cooked and ready to be served
To the discerning followers
Of the West Ham way
Half time in the East End
And it could still be the right
Time for French cuisine
To be devoured with ravenous
Appetite the Lyon main course
Drinking the finest Chablis
Oh West Ham
You’ll never disappoint us
Where the bubbles flight
Will be launched on next Thursday
On the night
You never know

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