Football Poets

Until We Go To Games Again

until we go to games again
I’m trawling way down mem’ry lane
the times my fingers near turned blue
the dramas being there with you
and Covid’s got me looking back
at what it is we miss we lack
the times we tried but never could
be close to what we dreamed was good
how little did we know back then
how long before we’d go again

but to be on that windblown hill
I’d swap it all to be there still
in spite of how we moaned up there
regardless of the time of year
the South Stand up at the New Lawn
is like some endless Narnia dawn
but still we watched on freezing nights
on cold weekends or by floodlight
but I would give it all my friend
to simply go to games again

and though we view when games are streamed
it’s an apocalyptic scene
where ground staff sanitize the ball
and no one can shake hands at all
the vacant stands the masks and sounds
you get inside an empty ground
the touchline rants and frantic shouts
of “”hold the ball” and “get it out!”
the coach who yells forever more
the words we’ve never heard before
the screamed expletives at the ref
the hope we keep until the death
we watch at home and just pretend
that we are back there once again

how odd to once more hear a crowd
it’s gonna sound extremely loud
and oh how strange to stand so near
the fans without these masks we wear
without the risk of touching things
that living through pandemics brings
we helpless fans are all the same
all longing to go to a game
but still how brilliant when this ends
to be there standing once again

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Often, I am permitted to return to a football pitch

As if it were a scene made up by the mind,
That is not mine, but is a place maintained by a groundsman,
Goalmouth gaping, players assembled
That is mine, so near to the heart, ready for play
An eternal acre or so folded in all movement,
So that there is a ball therein
That is a made place, raised by floodlights
Wherefrom the shadows of the players fall
Wherefrom fall all the stadia I am
All likenesses of The First Game of Football
Whose goalposts are flames lit to all games
And all those who play, who have played or wish to play
Or who watch and to all who understand
Whose games are a disturbance of teams within a world
That is a field folded.
It is only a dream of the grass blowing
And players’ urging and acting in the game
Whose secret we see in a children’s game
By Roy of the Rovers told.
Often I am permitted to return to a football pitch
Across white lines and into the playing area
As if it were a given property of the mind
That certain bounds hold against chaos,
That is a place of first permission to play
Everlasting omen of the joy
That it is to play, to watch
And to be.

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