Man Friday: 25% Extra Large Easter Triptych

1. A Jolly Good Friday

Jesus was an Englishman,
The Son of Grace (W.G.)
Cured 99 limbs on the village green
And a leper before the Last Tea.

Jesus remained a gentleman
Though the crowd’s game wasn’t cricket,
Carried His cross with stiff upper lip
And was only politely anti-Semitic.

2. Easter Saturday: 0-1, 2-1, 2-2.

The team I follow is full of Jesses who think they’re God’s gift, diving Christians
and Daniels up against Lions

A voice in the faithless crowd calls “Judas”
As our transferred ex-Saviour applauds ex-fans.

Nil-one, man down, the game as dead
As a frozen church, the comeback beckons.

On thawing cold feet, we are glory glory singing
It’s all worth it, after all, and then it isn’t.

3. Sunday: Petering Out

Nailed upside down at dawn,
The cockerel crowing with the crowd,
I tried to speak up for You,
"Love Can Turn The World Around."

Gravel-voiced but choked
Out of a throat of clay
I threw my word of rock
Too hard, too hard, away.

Now across this sheer water,
A crystal light
Turns and returns
Upon memory's tide.

My father is fishing
Still waters at sunrise.
He turns and winks:
I fear no evil when he is with me.

What voice sounding sure
In the depths of my heart
Drowns the distant breaking
Of a shell's lost cry?


4. Easter Mundane

Nothing happens.
I don't feel a thing.
The rock doesn't roll.
The angels don't sing.

Good Friday isn't bad.
Saturday hangs on
A Sunday that rises
But not for long.

The hiker at the crossroads
Asks for directions
Down unbridled Ways
To non-consummations.

The cyclist’s windy map
Winds in endless rotation
Of his pre-booked, pre-cooked
Predestination.

The City get hammered.
I don't feel a thing.
The cock can't crow
And no angels sing.



Notes: This little sequence came out of the Unsunny Easter of 2003 originally. The only consistency with 2011 - and now 2013 - is my team's Easter form. It's an effort to do a modern version of the Renaissance Easter painting in which all the Jewish characters looked Italian, here a triptych. The impulse of 'Easter Mundane' is that post holiday void which is also the post-Christian void. I read an Easter Saturday 1972 poem (by Tom Leech, pictured) many years ago in which a crowd of pub-punters talk about a 'transferred' player who, the reader gradually twigs, is Jesus. The picture shows Tom earlier this year in India, one of the few holy lands I got to before him. 'Petering Out' fuses St Peter's story - he asked to be crucified upside down as contrition for that legendary denial - with a rare and precious memory of fishing with my father at Shearwater Lake near Longleat, Wilts, one Sunday morning about a hundred years ago.

Sheer poetry!!!

Bristol City are promoted to the Championship.

Coca-Cola Football League One : Table 05 May 16:57 Home Away Team P W D L F A W D L F A GD PTS 1 Scunthorpe 46 15 6 2 40 17 11 7 5 33 18 38 91 2 Bristol City 46 15 5 3 35 20 10 5 8 28 19 24 85 3 Blackpool 46 12 6 5 40 25 12 5 6 36 24 27 83 4 Nottm Forest 46 14 5 4 37 17 9 8 6 28 24 24 82 5 Yeovil 46 14 3 6 22 12 9 7 7 33 27 16 79 6 Oldham 46 13 4 6 36 18 8 8 7 33 29 22 75 7 Swansea 46 12 6 5 36 20 8 6 9 33 33 16 72 8 Carlisle 46 12 5 6 35 24 7 6 10 19 31 -1 68 9 Tranmere 46 13 5 5 33 22 5 8 10 25 31 5 67 10 Millwall 46 11 8 4 33 19 8 1 14 26 43 -3 66 11 Doncaster 46 8 10 5 30 23 8 5 10 22 24 5 63 12 Port Vale 46 12 3 8 35 26 6 3 14 29 39 -1 60 13 Crewe 46 11 4 8 39 38 6 5 12 27 34 -6 60 14 Northampton 46 8 5 10 27 28 7 9 7 21 23 -3 59 15 Huddersfield 46 9 8 6 37 33 5 9 9 23 36 -9 59 16 Gillingham 46 14 2 7 29 24 3 6 14 27 53 -21 59 17 Cheltenham 46 8 6 9 25 27 7 3 13 24 34 -12 54 18 Brighton 46 5 7 11 23 34 9 4 10 26 24 -9 53 19 Bournemouth 46 10 5 8 28 27 3 8 12 22 37 -14 52 20 Leyton Orient 46 6 10 7 30 32 6 5 12 31 45 -16 51 21 Chesterfield 46 9 5 9 29 22 3 6 14 16 31 -8 47 22 Bradford 46 5 9 9 27 31 6 5 12 20 34 -18 47 23 Rotherham 46 8 4 11 37 39 5 5 13 21 36 -17 38 24 Brentford 46 5 8 10 24 41 3 5 15 16 38 -39 37

never tire of looking at it!

City Go On The Attack

CITY GO ON THE ATTACK

(as broadcast today on Radio Bristol and published in the Western Daily Press)


08:00 - 27 January 2007

How many Os in Middlesb(o)rough?
Some people think there are two.
There's one - except this Saturday
A nought at the end will do.
But what will the City figure be?
What number will settle the score
With credits to Murray, Showunmi
Maybe? Just the one? Maybe two. Maybe four?

Gareth Calway, Bard of Ashton Gate

January Poem Of The Month

Sending Coventry

Put our first away win
For months on a pedestal
The goals went in
Bang! bang! like a pistol
Our attack like infantry
Their defence like crystal
We went to championship Coventry
And sent them to Bristol!

December Poem Of The Month (Part IV)

Advent Calendar Selection Box

from Sheer Paltry

Bard Of Bristol

"You’re supposed to be at ’ome!!"

Standing in my team red before a game, yelling the chants - in and out of sync,
The main feeling is of being a complete fraud.
It's not that the team doesn't matter to me:
It matters enough to give me a heart attack.
It's just that, with only distant memories of 2-3-5 to fall back on,
I never really understand what's going on.
There are fifty blokes with a view I could ask from anywhere around me
But they each seem to be commentating on a different match.
And I live five hours from Bristol so it's hard to stay in touch.
And, however you market it, the match atmosphere is just like you get in a men-only garage -
Oily, reductive, ferociously competitive about everything and nothing-
Aggravated by six pints of booze and ten thousand men-brains,
The kind of thing I went to University to get away from.
If it weren't for the tightening in the stomach every match day,
The inferno of baying noise - purged by love and loyalty
(And comradeship and chantorion and cheer,)
The shiver of the perfectly pitched pass,
The tantalising tactical one twos, the toothsome tingling tackles,
The faith-affirming final ball through the box,
The frantic flash of foot through frenzied ball
The fluent flight of ball through air into flapping net,
The fabulous tapestry of red against blue over green,
The red knights tilting at perfection,
The pavilions of banners, pennants and scarves,
The child’s red and white Christmas of the goal consummations -
Then I probably wouldn't bother.

December Poem Of The Month (Part II)

Advent Calendar Selection Box

Kings Of The Forest

The Robins went back to the Forest
And did what they didn't before.
The robbers got two goals and two pens
The Robins the same and two more.
To go to the top-of-the-tree club
And sing out our victory song
Is brave and adventurous and merry
And shows us both plucky and strong.
This may be the day that the Robins
Proved to themselves they can be
The kings of the forest come April
And end it atop of the tree!