"Forgive Me"

If you were from the Sixties generation
You could tell me where you were
Like the rest of the nation
When Kennedy died
And the whole world cried.
If you, like me...
Are from the football generation
Born in the Sixties
I bet you
A pound to a penny
You know EXACTLY
Where you were
A quarter of a century ago today
The day NINETY SIX died
When police and politicians lied
The City of Liverpool cried
And the media tried
To blame ordinary fans
Saying they had their own
Blood on their hands.
Throw enough mud
And it sticks
Untruthful spiteful
Covering up tricks.
I was at Claremont Road, Hendon
Watching Dulwich Hamlet play
When we started gathering round
Transistor radios
On that ordinary spring April day.
At first we laughed and joked
About a few dead Scousers causing trouble
Our uninformed mirth
Soon turning to shock
As bodies piled up
Among the rubble.
A few reported DEAD
Soon turned into a score
Then on the telly after the game
Sixty, seventy, eighty and more.
F.A. Cup semi-final
Dreaming of Wembley Way
For ninety six excited people
It was to be their last ever day.
I don't even want to
Try to comprehend
The fear they all went through
Crushed at the Leppings Lane End.
All in the name of supporting their club
It's all they wanted to do
Then caged in and left to die
Worse than animals in a zoo.
We're now two and a half
Decades down the road
And the families
Don't give up their fight
But now the truth is coming out
I hope justice is in sight.
So what if some fans turned up drunk
Or others jumped over a gate
They weren't guilty of a death sentence
For the sin of some being late.
The fact is incompetent
Police and safety
Killed them
And sealed their fate.
Young and old
Left to die
Despite their desperate plea's
Then the blame was unforgivably turned
At a grieving city on it's knees.
I'm sorry in the past I mocked you
It was just silly words I said
And I hope this poem makes small amends
To honour and respect your dead.

Dulwich Poet 15th April 2014

(Today was the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster)