Football Poets

The Women’s World Cup Final

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 So here we are
Over the hills and moors
Village post offices
Spiritual churches,
Lighthouses at sea
Monumental mountains
Towering and glowering
In the murky mists
The ladies are in the
World Cup Final
England awaits
Its epic narratives
Spreading their comfort
Blankets across the land
We can sense and then
Hear these memorable trumpets
Victorious and charging
Across tumultuous skies
Soaring over the Lake District
And then plunging into
The Pennines where even
Excitable gulls
Can hardly contain their
Vocal expectation
Girls will seize the day
A pall of embarrassment
Falls forlornly
Across the male machismo
This has to be the moment
When icons are born
Back page heroes
And femininity rules
Lads, chaps this is
One in the eye for you
How joyously aware we are
Of our faults and foibles
Are we ready to hold
Our heads shamefully
Behind a veil of self consciousness?
Curtains and living rooms
With nothing to disguise the hurt
And pain stretching across
Sorrowful eyes
Piteous cries of why?
Hoping that none will see us
Now shifting uneasily
Hiding privately
In remote corners
Oh woe. Men of England
It’s 57 years since Bobby
From Barking lifted the male
World Cup
Nothing since then
But the ladies do it overnight
No doubts, no hesitation or
Deviation.
European Champions
A year ago
Now and world champions
Quite possibly today
Soon to be revealed
Gentlemen be prepared
To hide behind sofas
And settees again
Dazed and dumbfounded
Before accepting the status quo
Reduced to a quivering wreck
Anything they can do
The girls can do infinitely
Better
Silenced by the passage of time
57 years of satire, figures of fun
Laughingly lampooned by the great
And the good
Parodied mercilessly by
Innumerable comedy wordsmiths
But the girls can be
World Champions with
A flourish of fanfares
Down Under
Aussies finally
Accepting defeat
After Ashes cricket
Had been rammed down
English throats
Quite decisively
Only a Spanish armada
Stand between
English battalions
On the horizon
Ready to Ole and
Then stylish siestas
England, World Champions
For 1966, read 2023
Decades of emptiness
Finally lifted
Come on Lionesses

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