To follow up on Travis Nichols’ post, “Think of the Stamps!“, I want to point out that Wales already has a female poet laureate, Gwyneth Lewis, the author of this protest against the Welsh Rugby Union:
A Wooden Spoon for the WRU
(A druid speaks)
I have consulted the mistletoe,
stared at starling footprints in snow:
the time is ripe for your overthrow.
I give you a spoon I shaped of ash
because you didn’t nurture the flash
of play but thought, maybe, of cash.
Here’s a dip I turned from oak
but look, in your hands, it slips into smoke.
You’ve made our last Grand Slam a joke.
Actual rugby can never redeem
your backroom moves of dodge and scheme.
It’s you who need to raise your game.
How can a committee always outlive
coaches, players? It’s hard to forgive
shadowy men with hands like sieves.
Here’s the last spoon, I carved it from gall:
it’s you, not the team, who have dropped the ball.
Hang this up, with shame, in your hall.
Don’t ask me how or why, but I heard Lewis read just this week in Norwich, England. The mind cannot forget anything. Every mean glance, shared muffin, drunken innuendo or upside down map has its tiny slot in the brain, leaves an unbleachable stain on the cortex, so I must carry this couplet to my grave:
You carried your helmet like a head.
We all thought you were already dead.Makes me hanker for another rugby poem:
Reply to the Haka
Welcome, enemy, to holy ground.
Our ball will carry you underground.
Cyn hir, fe fydd eich cnawd yn goch, [Soon, your flesh will be red
Llosgwn ein llwybr trwyddoch. as we burn our path through you.]
You’re a forest, we’re a fire,
You are paper, we are stone.
We will see you to the bone.
You may dance, but we’re the drum.
In your wall we find the door.
You have whispered, but here’s our roar.
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