City Stories

The tap drips into the sink

  If she could only

  Think …think …think.

  Maybe she could rewrite it

  And this twenty-fourth April

  Won’t be as cruel as the rest.

  The story plays out again,

  Blurred faces moving, packed tight,

  Tall fences penning them in,

  Stretcher parties with hoardings

  Running across the pitch.

  Too much pain to take in

  Through pictures on TV.

  When the cameras had moved on

  A bitter breeze blew off the moors,

  Parted unread pages of programmes

  And rippled shirts left on railings

  In football’s quiet mark of respect.

  Men moved head-down, hunched over brooms,

  Sweeping the terrace terror swept through.

  Other, bigger brooms tidied the truth up too

  But it burnt and bruised the blame that held it,

  Too big and broken a burden to bury.

  Ninety-six silent voices

  Demanding to be heard

  Refusing to be blown by the wind

  Or washed away by the rain

  Her old uniform still hangs

  From the back of the door they pushed open,

  It’s never closed in her mind.

  Wide-eyed, blinking back tears

  In that sports hall mortuary

  Where grief echoed off the walls,

  It hurts her soul still after all these years,

  Her shame for the lies she was forced to tell,

  To write in black and white to save the boys in blue.

  But this year the blame is shifting,

  She can tell her own truth too.

  Maybe people will listen,

  Maybe she could rewrite it at last.

  *******

  Seventy-Two Years Ago

  By

  Jason Barney