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Munich, Feb 6th 1958

Clik The Mouse

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Slush …
I didn’t know
who’d have thought it
with all that snow ….
and ice –
clogging up the wings?
or a convenient, chilling, pretext for a crash report?

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Slush …
they’d have walked through it, when crossing the tarmac

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Slush …
they’d have run through it, in training

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Slush …
they’d have timed their tackles, when sliding through it, out on the pitch

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 Hush …
the Zagreb stadium silenced
as United go 3-0 up by half-time
pegged back to 3 all by the end
but they qualified nevertheless
for the semi-final of the European Cup

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 Slush …
the aviation industry
learned a lot that day –
we learned
of how Gregg the garrulous goalie
became Harry the hero
of how for Big Dunc, a big chunk – of superstardom stolen away
breathed his last
but lies iconic in the past
and how Munich
became the burial ground, for the Busby Babes

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 And now …
we write slushy words
as we try to extemporise our feelings
but no passage of prose
can adequately capture, or return
those Titans

© Clik the mouse, 11th January 2006

Notes

Written after watching a docudrama of the Munich air crash which killed so many of the Manchester United team, and other passengers.

It was shown on Tuesday 10th January 2006, on BBC1 as part of the Surviving Disaster series.

It concluded with the news that the pilot was eventually exonerated of pilot error, when it was proven that slush on the runway was the probable cause of the crash, and not ice on the wings as was first thought in the initial crash report.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/munich-feb-6th-1958/