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Poet Laureate’s The Shirt

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Just as the nation is beginning to get over the shame of our World Cup failure and move on, Carol Anne Duffy, the poet laureate, has stirred those painful memories up again in her new poem, ‘The Shirt’, focusing on the England footballers’ woeful performance and their tendency to blame everything but themselves…

Afterwards, I found him alone at the bar
and asked him what went wrong. It’s the shirt,
he said. When I pull it on it hangs on my back
like a shroud, or a poisoned jerkin from Grimm
seeping its curse onto my skin, the worst tattoo.
I shower and shave before I shrug on the shirt,
smell like a dream; but the shirt sours my scent
with the sweat and stink of fear. It’s got my number.
I poured him another shot. Speak on, my son. He did.
I’ve wanted to sport the shirt since I was a kid,
but now when I do it makes me sick, weak, paranoid.
All night above the team hotel, the moon is the ball
in a penalty kick. Tens of thousands of fierce stars
are booing me. A screech owl is the referee.
The wind’s a crowd, forty years long, bawling a filthy song
about my Wag. It’s the bloody shirt! He started to blub
like a big girl’s blouse and I felt a fleeting pity.
Don’t cry, I said, at the end of the day you’ll be back
on 100K a week and playing for City.

Carol Ann Duffy

Louise Watson, Editor

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