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World Cup draw

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 So it’s our cousins from across the pond
In World Cup combat
Uncle Sam, New York, New York,
LA, across wide expanses of freeway
Burger joints galore
It’s America in November
For the gentleman whose
Waistcoat caught the masculine imagination
England against USA in the middle of oil rich
Deserts
Where once Peter O’ Toole presided
Over wind blown, huge acres of sand in
Celluloid fantasies on the silver screen
Gareth Southgate in the Wild West
Surely geographically wrong
Southgate in Saudi Arabia
It almost sounds like the adventure
TE Lawrence never completed
England also meet Iran
Where the wicked Ayatollah
Once brought blood, death
Callousness, the dastardly
Deeds of a dictator’s savage
Nightmares to a country that
Never had any say, helpless victims
Of violent circumstance, ripping
Through and tearing up the rule books
Please peace prevail above mayhem
You then thought of the punctured heart
Of Ally Macleod when Scotland had
Nothing but feebleness and capitulation
In 1978 World Cup demoralised days
Burying his ashen face in a sackcloth of ashes
A pitiful draw in Argentina, Scotland
Slinking off the world stage and Peruvian
Wind chimes overwhelmed the Tartan roar
Cubillas thunderous free kick, the crucial blow
So England are given the kindest or allegedly
Groups, it could have been far worse
Spain and Germany meeting in classic
A manifestation of epic minds
Football’s mightiest imaginations
England then could meet their
Home Counties allies, Scotland again, possibly
The fire and brimstone of the Welsh dragons
Or deeply emotionally, sensitively, Ukraine
A World Cup in winter awaits its Saudi
Hosts, the Canadian maple leaf, the Far
East, mysterious tales of contests yet
To be told, the Middle East biblical
Footballing scriptures in modern
Day incarnations
Europe and more global
Sweetest of confections
England, Gareth Southgate
World Cup questions
And positive outcomes
We must hope
56 years of wilderness wanderings
England
Bring home that Jules
Rimet World Cup.

Notes

My reaction to yesterday’s World Cup draw.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/world-cup-draw/?shared=email&msg=fail