While you cling to your thirties you’re deluded
you’re linked to ageing gods: those goods
with seasons still to play: Signori, Zola…
(when you’d let in, not score their goals).
Their sprint towards retirement finds you clinging
to truthless youth, but here’s the thing:
now Channel Four have hacked the whole peninsu-
la from their schedules, that sick prince
called your illusion dies here. Greet your forties
with fortitude, or greet and snort.
Time sneers at our retorts to rampant ageing –
our midlife Harley’s farting rage.
So say farewell to all pretence at manhood,
the ninety minute legs, the tan
that once looked buff, not tangerine; be careful
combing decockatoodled hair.
Farewell to your surprising young erections,
the corncob midriff. Genuflect
before the set that’s emptied of your icons
and board the bastard fitness bike.
Farewell the teams for which I half-screamed Forza!
dreaming they got my full support:
to Lazio and their fascistic tifosi
miles from my left-winged repose –
sofad each Sunday with a cold Peroni
I was the phony on the phone
trying to win a ticket to Bologna
but if I had, would I have gone?
I put my maleness in another country
where I need never meet the runt.
Goodbye to all the players that the ratings
decided we can’t watch: the blate,
the mediocre, the great but bloody luckless,
and those who never gave a fuck.
Goodbye to Battistuta and Chiesa,
to Rui Costa and to Frey,
to Cannavaro, Paramatti, Nesta,
Morfeo, Buffon, and the best
presenter, pun-drenched alter ego, boyish
balding James Richardson, goodbye.
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