Not much peotry here in recent times, for which I apologise. My excuses are threefold. Firstly the weather. I’m lazy enough at the best of times, but the kind of summer days with which we’ve recently been blessed dent my productivity even further. Secondly, my current poetic reading is a recent translation of Dante’s Infero, by Ciaran Carson. Very fine it is too, but the epic form doesn’t really lend itself to a blog posting. Finally, the World Cup. All other matters must take a back seat while the world’s greatest sporting occasion is in progress.
To keep things ticking over poetry-wise, while not losing sight of more important matters, I thought I’d do a post on a football poem. Sadly, this most lyrical of sports has generated much doggeral, but precious little in the way of true poetry. What I did find was delightful vignette from Billy Bragg. Entitled God’s Footballer, it’s on his 1991 album “Don’t Try This At Home” which also contains such classics as “Accident Waiting To Happen” and “Sexuality”. Here, the football stadium becomes the church, the fans the choir (for the uninitiated, Molineax is the home ground of Wolverhampton Wanderers). At first this seems like a cartoon, God’s Footballer no more than an eccentric local “character”, but on a second reading a certain heroism comes through. Though there’s a suggestion that the glum work of knocking on doors is a come-down after the glories of the football pitch, there’s also an admiration for our hero’s puritan abjuration of glory, even if Bragg can’t quite shake the suspicion that to thrill and delight on a Saturday afternoon is truly to do the Lord’s work. As John Lennon once sang, so Bragg suggests, “A Working-Class Hero is something to be”.
God’s footballer hears the voices of angels
Above the choir at Molineux
God’s footballer stands on the doorstep
And brings the Good News of the Kingdom to come
While the crowd sings ‘Rock of Ages’
The goals bring weekly wages
Yet the glory of the sports pages
Is but the worship of false idols and tempts him not
God’s footballer turns on a sixpence
And brings the Great crowd to their feet in praise of him
God’s footballer quotes from the Gospels
While knocking on doors in Black Country back streets
He scores goals on a Saturday
And saves souls on a Sunday
For the Lord says these are the Last Days
Prepare thyself for the Judgement yet to come
His career will be over soon
And the rituals of a Saturday afternoon
Bid him a reluctant farewell
For he knows beyond the sport lies the spiritual
2 Comments
That’s a wonderfully different angle on football. Let’s have some more.
[…] those posts tend to focus on the TV analysis, rather than the game itself. Once, I even wrote about football poetry, surely a less than blokish angle on the beautiful game. To get a grip on just how male I can be […]