Liverpool at the Millennium
from POEMS
Summary
City of arrivals, departures,
of comings and goings,
your character determined by
the choppy ebb and flow of tides,
sailings and shore-leave,
signings on and off,
one day securing ropes,
the next day slipping them:
your come-day-go-day
perky Scouse philosophy
comes from rattling gangplanks,
shifting decks: a jauntiness
derived from old habits
of rolling home, then, skint,
of sailing off again. Your fortunes tidal,
you rise and fall in prosperity
like barometer mercury. No wonder,
for insurance, you flaunt not one but two
pert phoenixes above your waterfront,
one backwards staring, the other dead ahead,
plonk two grandiose cathedrals,
one space-age, the other antwacky,
at opposite ends of a street
called Hope. No wonder
you heroically support
two footie teams, the Reds, the Blues,
whose fortunes also rise and fall
like Mersey's grey-brown tides.
No wonder reconciliation, co-existence
are themes you nag away at,
shifting as you always do
between swagger and uncertainty.
Here's another Big Ben moment then
for taking stock, sussing things out properly,
one that marks two thousand Christian years,
in which you just about half-share
(that's if we all agree the kick-off's
twelve-O-seven with King John).
So let this moment be bright and brash
with celebration,
with fireworks and fanfares,
lashings of lobscouse,
and god-bless-yer-owld-cotton-socks,
Liverpool,
breeder of saints and sinners, of bruisers
and jesters and backstreet poets.
It's time to think again in terms
not of fall but rise – right for us
to think less of murky Merseyside and more
of resurgent Liverpool, time to be sexy
like that rude statue on Lewis's
where all the lovers meet.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Gladsongs and GatheringsPoetry and its Social Context in Liverpool since the 1960s, pp. 1 - 2Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2001