|

Start of an era feeling

Peter Bennett

Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Gambolling like month-old foals,
We happily anticipate the new campaign
Optimistic that the new regime
Will for Liverpool, change the game.
We understand that God mama Henry
Flying in from afar
Trumps the ugly sisters,
But what’s between Rafa and Roy
And now King Kenny?
Tactics, I suppose.
Now instead of a man who gently purrs
Mellow words of love
About the game he wants to win
But whose urbanity
Transcends the usual trite inanities,
We have a scion who the game adores.
So gone is the gobbling turkey-face
Of avuncular Roy, soft-edged
And not without a little grace
Whose fundamental ploy
Is not to walk on water
But, who, like us, is human
And who, like us, loves players
like they are his children.
But perhaps wrong time, wrong place.
Out too is the chubby Don Juan look
Of that effete and humourless man
Dazzled and defeated by success too early won

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Kenny now bestrides the land
Like a phoenix risen,
Like a reluctant messiah
Fortuitously come to hand.
He’s done it all before
Both in management and in glorious play
In another life both on and off the pitch;
He is reticence and pinched-face mean
With words he doesn’t have to say;
But he’s carried every cup aloft,
Rejoiced with the Spion Kop
And wept with the rest of us
During those long dark days.
Now his waiting in the wings
Attains some point as he returns
And magically corrects
Those maladies, those things
That have dragged our legend
To the edge of mediocre memory.

© Peter Bennett

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/start-of-an-era-feeling/