I Like A Good Poem, One With Lots of Fighting

Roger McGough

A Good Poem

by Roger McGough (1937 – )

I like a good poem
one with lots of fighting
in it. Blood, and the
clanging of armour. Poems

against Scotland are good,
and poems that defeat
the French with crossbows.
I don’t like poems that

aren’t about anything.
Sonnets are wet and
a waste of time.
Also poems that don’t

know how to rhyme.
If I was a poem
I’d play football and
get picked for England.

Vow

by Roger McGough

I vow to honour the commitment made this day
Which, unlike the flowers and the cake,
Will not wither or decay. A promise, not to obey
But to respond joyfully, to forgive and to console,
For once incomplete, we now are whole.

I vow to bear in mind that if, at times
Things seem to go from bad to worse,
They also go from bad to better.