The Guardian website today (it was yesterday when I wrote this), covered the story of the Poet Laureate, Carol Anne Duffy, writing a poem about David Beckham. The poem follows:

Achilles, by Carol Ann Duffy

Myth’s river — where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boy flowed on, his name on its lips.

Without him, it was prophesised, they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him in girls’ sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs…

But when Odysseus came, with an athlete’s build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd’s roar,

And it was sport, not war, his charmed foot on the ball…

But then his heel, his heel, his heel…

‘All well and good’, I thought, but it’s a bit unwieldy for me. All those parentheses and mismatched lines. What we need, I thought (and poets can disagree with the Poet Laureate, by the way) is a simple rhyme scheme with more straight forward meaning. So, in the comments of the Guardian post and (now) here, is my poem for David Beckham. I daren’t suggest it will achieve as much notoriety but well…in truth I prefer it:

Our Beckham, not a saint or god
But common man of common birth

Kicked balls on many sodden fields
With such skill none dared doubt his worth

But these thing happen, never cease.
Good fortune or a tragic blow

At home or on fields overseas
Can tackle harshly all heroes

And fringe or not, integral, bound
To squads of like-mind sporting types

His mind sincere, his focus found
On maybe realised dreams of pipes

He’ll not know now, nor strut his boots
On foreign lands where chancers play

A lucky few will score and shoot
Throughout to World Cup final day

But not our Becks, tackled with pain
(Achilles feels it through the years)

Instead he’ll roar support in games
And maybe shed the common tears.