European football & Some questions on the Cultural Revolution
by Alistair Noon
[ poetry - december 09 ]
European football
Thanks Mike, yes, a wandering of peoples
is speeding west across the limes,
past halls that hatched ten million Beetles,
the overgrown camps of legions and battletanks,
and Hanover, where the squaddies binge-drank,
to vacancies in firms and families,
to the Love Parade with sixpacks.
Some play in ceremonial dress: the inspector
is checking their blue and white shirts and scarves.
Let’s look one more time at their reflections
in these plexiglass luggage racks,
or the mirrors half-covered by jackets,
or the windows tanned like police box glass
in the late eighties on Unter den Linden.
Mike, you’ll recall that game in November
and the lobshot the keeper tracked,
lowering his hands to let it skim over;
then before the rolling eyes of the team,
it exploded into net and screen.
Now, for analysis of tribes and battles it’s back
to the studio and Publius Tacitus.
Some questions on the Cultural Revolution
Which way up is correct
for this tube of clear liquid, red stars,
and tumbling, miniature tinsel,
teenagers on their own Long March?
Shake it, the stars disperse
in this fuselage as it crashes.
Photons flow through it like an aura
around a Great Pilot’s head.
Who was it who unlatched
the cabin door, did it just wrench open?
Particles chorus and dance: a touch,
they reform; a tap
and the statue’s face is smashed.
Made in France. The stars
remingle and flash.
