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Remembering Morocco

Eddie Gibbons

Wednesday, September 13th, 2006

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Walking into the Barber’s Shop I clock
the mirrored features of a colleague
I worked with twenty years ago.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 He’s busy having his head arranged
by the hairdresser, like a mannequin
being coached for a shop window display.
It isn’t until he’s walking out that he
recognizes me. I say we seem only to
meet once every World Cup:

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 ‘Remember last time – that bar in Lyon,
en-route to St. Etienne?’

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Me, the lone Englishman
suddenly surrounded by a troop of tartans,
when his voice broke from the ranks,
a bugle call from the 5th Cavalry cresting
the ridge, to rescue me from my alien accent.

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 ‘And just how dire was that Morocco game?’

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 He corrects me, saying no, that wasn’t the
last World Cup. What about Japan and Korea?

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 ‘My God! Was that match really eight years ago?’

8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 We swap current addresses and he exits,
having shorn me of four years worth
of memories, which have fallen from me
and gather grey, lifeless, cropped, around
my feet.

Notes

For Greg Reid.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/remembering-morocco/