Cod Almighty | Article
by Alistair Wilkinson
19 March 2018
"A sad poem for a sad weekend"
Look at the footprint in the snow. It is bold,
defined, brave in its defiance, its pride.
Look closer. Its depths are dizzying,
sunk deep into a cold wilderness as if
giant hands have carved the fissures and
plateaus, the crenulations and parapets.
The bulwarks and arrow slits.
It is an open, empty mine; the sun shines
into its depths casting stripes of shadowed,
greying black against the stark white, a
monochrome in an unforgiving flatness.
The footprint is anonymous.
Some climb into its depths, picking their way
over and under. Their faces shine with tears
frozen on cheeks blasted by six years drifting in a
nothing, six years carving nothing,
building nothing
The tears were frozen on a warm Wembley day
two years ago
and now nothing more than a faint, faint glimmer
in a footprint in the snow.