POETRY - HISTORY


Sixties London Star:

Was where the focus was, during my adolescence, Wembley & Carnaby Street,
World Cup winners and fashion trend centre, for the flower power world.
As I sat perched on a front garden wall, watching England’s finest sporting hour,
An underage paperboy stand in, on this momentous afternoon in English history.
The star that had first heralded it’s arrival, with the Busby Babes in the late fifties,
That floundered so tragically in the Bavarian snow, to rob England of two world cups.
Perhaps, we shall never know, for I never saw, before my time,
But a glimpse I had, of Nick’s Blanchflower Spurs, that Europe did conquer.
As in history of old, without the blood and savagery, the sex by mutual consent.
Then the Hammers of east London, the magic trio, that would the world conquer,
First Europe in ’65, a Wembley spectacle rehearsal, for the big one very soon.
The unofficial English football academy, of the post war 20th century,
Were any of this team, not to become supreme coaches, a mark of pedigree,
Set by the golden master of British football, Bobby Moore.
A hero, in the most British traditional way, utilized but not fully recognized,
Or repaid for glorious leadership, that in reality was never cultivated.
A general who stayed a captain, class echoing colonial stigma,
That haunts and plagues us to this day, hinders and delays us, in retrograde narcissism,
The mirror in which we can see, the tragic reality of blatant snobbery, or worse.
All I knew as a boy, is that when I saw that blonde Adonis, leading England,
It never occurred to my young mind, that England might not win, this home field world cup,
As east London’s finest trio, traveled linked to the world cup stage.
The general, the guile and the executioner, Bobby, Martin and Geoff,
The omniscient poise and control, the shadowy guile & creativity, the explosive power and finishing,
All personified in the last minute of frenetic defence, from which,
The golden master controls, feints, looks up & strokes the most sublime sixty metre pass,
“And they think it’s all over, well it is now.”