Elegy for Hillsborough
Today's piece of writing is a poem I wrote about fourteen years ago, on the tragedy of the Sheffield soccer stadium where ninety-six people died.
ELEGY FOR HILLSBOROUGH
- and you are dead, and all our little dances
Are nothing; and the voices of the dead
Have made us still. And their terrible faces,
Their poor faces, of pity that breaks hearts,
They speak to us, and we've no words to answer,
They speak of silence. O, will nothing do?
We must reach them, I must reach you, my brothers,
Who raise your hands at me out of your graves;
Your burial places made of human flesh,
Your burial places made of human flesh.
You call. I have no voice to answer
The dead; and stretch my hands at you,
Poor brothers whom I have never met,
Poor bits of joy, shut out before I knew you.
As men love other men, I swear I loved you
When you were dragged out of your sun-lit slaughterhouse,
Lost to us; lost to our love of you.
As men have joy in men, so is my joy
Turned into death in me for all your deaths,
For all the joy I'll never have of you,
For all the joy I'll never have of you.
And words come thick and clotted as the boots
That crashed into your shoulders, as the weight
That bore you down and set you awash with pain
As red as fire, that tore out of you shouts,
Out of you silence. No dignity of death
Was left, but an obscene upstomping.
And words come crowding out of helplessness
To fill the yawning gap within my heart,
The great black hole of you and of my shame;
That I could never even share your pain,
That I could never even share your pain.
All that you had to teach you have now taught me
And spoken out, poor stupid bulks of flesh
Dragged out like Christ's body from the cross,
Brothers of mine. And in this life I never
Shall have any other word from you
Than this, and this is not for speaking;
That if you're dead then I'm with you tonight
If you are dead I am with you tonight.
It's over. Let God's eye remember
How men have become knights before the deaths;
How they tore up the wood to make them stretchers,
Remember that they helped and did not stop.
Let God remember how six and ninety died
And paid to die, because someone was stupid.
The night is fallen, and there is no moon;
The sky is covered. God receives His saints.
ELEGY FOR HILLSBOROUGH
- and you are dead, and all our little dances
Are nothing; and the voices of the dead
Have made us still. And their terrible faces,
Their poor faces, of pity that breaks hearts,
They speak to us, and we've no words to answer,
They speak of silence. O, will nothing do?
We must reach them, I must reach you, my brothers,
Who raise your hands at me out of your graves;
Your burial places made of human flesh,
Your burial places made of human flesh.
You call. I have no voice to answer
The dead; and stretch my hands at you,
Poor brothers whom I have never met,
Poor bits of joy, shut out before I knew you.
As men love other men, I swear I loved you
When you were dragged out of your sun-lit slaughterhouse,
Lost to us; lost to our love of you.
As men have joy in men, so is my joy
Turned into death in me for all your deaths,
For all the joy I'll never have of you,
For all the joy I'll never have of you.
And words come thick and clotted as the boots
That crashed into your shoulders, as the weight
That bore you down and set you awash with pain
As red as fire, that tore out of you shouts,
Out of you silence. No dignity of death
Was left, but an obscene upstomping.
And words come crowding out of helplessness
To fill the yawning gap within my heart,
The great black hole of you and of my shame;
That I could never even share your pain,
That I could never even share your pain.
All that you had to teach you have now taught me
And spoken out, poor stupid bulks of flesh
Dragged out like Christ's body from the cross,
Brothers of mine. And in this life I never
Shall have any other word from you
Than this, and this is not for speaking;
That if you're dead then I'm with you tonight
If you are dead I am with you tonight.
It's over. Let God's eye remember
How men have become knights before the deaths;
How they tore up the wood to make them stretchers,
Remember that they helped and did not stop.
Let God remember how six and ninety died
And paid to die, because someone was stupid.
The night is fallen, and there is no moon;
The sky is covered. God receives His saints.