Though Cowards Flinch

Health warning: What follows is an example of serious geekdom by someone whose Master’s dissertation was based on Aristophanes and who was very bored this evening. Namely, me. Unlike the only previous poetry competition on TCF, this will not hold your interest. Run away now.

If you haven’t fled, you might already have heard – being the sort of saddo who keeps up on cultural events – that Carol Ann Duffy, our poet-laureate, has written a poem about the triumph and tragedy of David Beckham, his career and injury and how terrible and inspiring the whole thing is. It goes like this:

Achilles

Myth’s river – where his mother
dipped him, fished him, a
slippery golden boy flowed on,
his name on its lips.

Without him, it was prophesied,
they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him
in girls’ sarongs; days of
sweetmeats, spices, silver
songs…

But when Odysseus came, with
an athlete’s build, a sword and a
shield, he followed him to the
battlefield, the crowd’s roar,

And it was sport, not war, his
charmed foot on the ball…

But then his heel, his heel, his heel…

One supposes that the worship of sporting celebrities has existed since the days of Ancient Greece. In my mind, that doesn’t make it any less irksome when famous poets – the successors of Coleridge or Shelley or Byron or Tennyson – start writing paeans to their heroes like they are eight year old boys or thirteen year old girls, who want to be or want to date that person.

So I have decided to write my own poem, to get into the spirit of things, invoking an ancient play which is much more fitting for David Beckham, merely one man among hundreds of talented footballers, than the epic Homeric tragedy on the rage of Achilles.

Beckham

Garlanded, astride Olympus.
His golden scrotum
the merest flash on a green field.
Cheering crowds anoint him.

Philosopher King. The coldless
African hordes fly.

Cast out are Paphlagon’s men,
their tongues outshone. The mob
love another whose fame stands
alone…

Charmless Dionysus awakes!
His dream fades amidst noisome
mist, while River Styx rocks his
boat and boasts back to sleep.

No sport, no war, just the oars
and Xanthias’ groans…

Brekekekex-koax-koax…

I tried to find some way of suggesting that David Healy’s right foot would kick England’s arse whether they had Beckham or not, but Duffy’s prose is quite constraining in its syllables per line, reflecting her predilection for simple words. I, on the other hand, quite like complex words.