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London Scottish

Mick Imlah

April, the last full fixture of the spring:
‘Feet, Scottish, feet!’ – they rucked the fear of God
Into Blackheath. Their club was everything:
And of the four sides playing that afternoon,
The stars, but also those from the back pitches,
All sixty volunteered for the touring squad,
And swapped their Richmond turf for Belgian ditches.
October: mad for a fight, they broke too soon
On the Ypres Salient, rushing the ridge between
‘Witshit’ and Messines. Three-quarters died.

Of that ill-balanced and fatigued fifteen
The ass selectors favoured to survive,
Just one, Brodie the prop, resumed his post.
The others sometimes drank to ‘The Forty-Five’:
Neither a humorous nor an idle toast.


Mick Imlah

from The Lost Leader (Faber and Faber, 2008)

Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

Tags:

death in battle football heroes & villains National Poetry Day 2009 poems on postcards Poetry By Heart Scotland post-1914 soldiers World War I

About this poem

London Scottish National Poetry Day postcard 2009

This poem was reproduced on a postcard for National Poetry Day 2009. Eight poetry postcards are published each year by the Scottish Poetry Library to celebrate National Poetry Day and are distributed throughout Scotland to schools, libraries and other venues. The theme for 2009 was heroes and villains. You can find out more about National Poetry Day in our National Poetry Day pages.

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Mick Imlah1956 - 2009

Mick Imlah, 'one of the outstanding British poets of his time', grew up in Milngavie, attended Oxford, and worked for many years as the poetry editor for the TLS until his untimely death from motor neurone disease in 2009.
More about Mick Imlah

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