….AND THE CHAMPIONS WILL BE by Otabor Imaghodor

It is back! The world’s most feisty, frenetic and followed football league returns this weekend, with debatably greater followership than it has ever enjoyed in its history. The English Premier League is back to provide fans their weekend doses of fun, passionate release and talking points to last through weekdays, as it has done since its inception in 1992.
Last season was arguably its most exciting edition yet, marked by numerous twists and turns at the top of the table and a record number of goals scored. At various points in the season four teams (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and finally Manchester City) seemed in pole position to seize English football’s greatest prize in an exciting, unpredictable rollercoaster. Throughout the 2013/14 season, the first placed team chopped and changed 25 times, the second most in terms of alternations in that position.
Despite this…

I know not everyone digs poetry, although I could not imagine myself without it. Still, I am convinced that every one can and does squeeze out some meaning from every poem. And thatz where the beauty begins to tickle.

You see, a simple poem will elucidate a thousand different interpretations. And thatz a simple poem. Sometimes what we make of a poem is so far removed from what the poet intended that one begins to question the purpose of it all. Even what a poem brings us to feel – a very foundational intent of the poet – can vary so widely that it’d take some psychology to make sense of the disparity being of so wide a range. And this for me is one of poetry’s highest qualities.

Thatz why the poet chooses not to elaborate. Thatz the fun of it. The pithier the better. Why play a game…

And to the least deserving of them we gave our years.
While those with honour languished in aloneness.
And our only reason were our fears.
We feared that we were unworthy of better men and purer women.
Our excuse was that we might soil these good ones with the guilt of our hands.
And so we forced our hearts to silence and thus deadened our conscience.
Gave ourselves wholly to our labour.
Grew our focus so sharp that our tunnel vision was total blindness.
So much so that when the very ones we’d abandoned,
operating on the very principles we’d betrayed;
when they brought us a chance for redemption.
We shrunk from it,
in fear that it could only be the manacles of our long-lost soul,
stretched forth to reclaim us once more.