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Forget What Didn’t (with apologies to Philip Larkin)

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Stopping the wallchart
Was an aid to sanity,
Was a merciful ending:

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 One no longer governed
By the need to record
Such details (those penalties)

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 I wanted them over,
Hurried to 3-0,
And looked back on

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Like the tournament games won
Missing behind the windows
Of a football-watching adulthood.

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 And the empty spaces?
Should they ever be filled,
Let it be with wholly imagined

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 English victories,
The day the World Cup is won,
And when the penalties go

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 Our way.

Source: https://footballpoets.org/poems/forget-what-didnt-with-apologies-to-philip-larkin/