And in that hour,in Andalusian light,
Air like a hot exhaust,
Cruzcampo beers in the bars,
Partisan cars on Ricardo,
Blue trees in the Murillo Gardens,
(Crushed flowers in Columbus’s wake)
Marble floors, and metal counters,
Ceramic glaze to offset the heat.
Flamenco dresses in shadowed doorways,
Purity to drive you mad.
Guitars Striking like knives
The day flagstone of a song..
Tapas and green olives. Dusty, hanging ham.
Around Giralda Cathedral, among thousands,
Gipsy girls sold sprigs,
offewred wild-eyed clairvoyance
To freckled,sun-burned faces.
Beyond Flagherty’s and the stale of carriage horses
A deracinated crowed, cried Salve! Salve!
In the street of the serpents.
(the citys beauty kept us sized
Good-humoured, gallus, brash.)
In the white alley ways of Santa Cruz,
You could almost believe
The Big Man sat with his children,
Glasgow paladins all,
Mcneill, Gemmill and Murdoch,
Johnstone, Lennox and Auld.
(All flesh is grass says the bible
and in 1967, we kissed the turf.
Bellowed like bulls with 4 stomachs,
In the fading stadium light…….
Like Mary Tudor and Calais
Lisbon is engraved in our hearts.)
And so in spain,after the match,
Oil-workers and Heather Alpha friends,
We sat in a roadside dive til dawn.
Peter Dalgarno, and his brothers
Jerry and John. Jim Savage & Fiona,
Roddy the roughneck, and I.
Not disconsolate in defeat
But tolerant of world-weary Porto fans,
who gave little for so much.
Too true, we drowned out sorrows,
It’s evident we drank all night.
Under a shower of ladybirds,
We sang out song & the Fields of Athenry,
And at daybreak, were aware
of what Cormac McConnell said,
About it being a hard inheritance.
The postman delivers the envelope.
You open it. and you live with the message.
Knew then what the Celtic faithful know,
And rehearse for other cities.
For whats the point of being Sons of Erin,
If it doesent break your heart?
For whatever reason,
Like the last Sultan in Granada,
I cried on leaving Seville
