Hillsborough, in Remembrance OR No Justice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

[Update Nov. 28 2019: Finally, 30 years on from the Hillsborough disaster, David Duckenfield - the only person prosecuted - was found not guilty of the manslaughter of 95 people at the stadium in 1989. Needless to say, the relatives of those killed who have been campaigning for justice all this time appeared upset and disgusted by the verdict.]

This is not a new poem but it has not appeared online for a couple of years and now seems an appropriate time to reinstate it. Although it was written in 1989, it did not appear in print until included in an anthology, ‘A Day in Time’ Forward Poetry, 2013. Why?

 I try in my poems to record as many events as possible that have made a deep impression on me and/or everyone else, for whatever reason; this one was written before I began to get poetry published on a regular basis in various magazines and anthologies, and later online. In this way, I began to build a modest reputation as a poet. Even so, it was rare indeed for an editor to accept a gay-interest poem which is why I resorted to self-publishing collections (2000-2012) that included both gay-interest and general poems by way of an attempt to convey not only that these are alternative voices of the same genre but also (to the less discerning among us) that there is more to a gay person’s identity than his or her sexuality. Besides, as far as I’m concerned, a poem is a poem is a poem just as a person is a person is a person...

A whole is the sum of its various parts, and as I have said on the blogs before, I see myself as a poet who also happens to be gay, not a gay poet; my sexuality is an integral part of who I am, but it is only a part. I have been very encouraged to hear from heterosexual readers that they enjoy many of the gay-interest poems I post while it would never have occurred to them previously to explore poems on a gay site. Hopefully, the realisation that gay people are essentially no less ordinary people than anyone else may help break put old prejudices and stereotypes to rights...so whenever straight readers email me that they have enjoyed a poem on my gay-interest blog, as a Liverpool F C supporter did only recently, I am thrilled.

Meanwhile…

It was announced yesterday that some people will (finally) be charged in relation to the Hillsborough tragedy. Among them is David Duckenfield, 73, police commander at the time, who will face charges of gross negligence manslaughter following the crush in the terrace pens of the Sheffield Wednesday stadium, Leppings Lane end at the match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest here in the UK on April 15, 1989.

HILLSBOROUGH, IN REMEMBRANCE or NO JUSTICE

For the ninety-six fans who died

(then made to shoulder the blame)

truth will out that lay half buried

Family, friends, have long cried

for justice, and in more than name,

for the ninety-six fans who died

If police, media, playing off-side,

who else engaging with shame?

Truth will out that lay half buried

It was a bulldog spirit succeeded

in putting human flaws in the frame

for the ninety-six fans who died

Where facts and cover-ups collide,

closure but, oh, so slowly ever came

(truth will out that lay half buried)

A closer look, loose threads tied,

(ghosts looking for a football game);

for the ninety-six fans who died,

truth will out that lay half buried

Copyright R. N. Taber 1989; 2012