FOOTBALL AFTER SCHOOL You’ll be one of them in a few years, warpaint slicked over your face ­ your common language jeers, dribbling the sun about the place with the premature swagger of manhood, butting it with your head: your school tie a stiff striped dagger. Yes, soon you’ll be picking scabs of kisses off your skin as each kick makes you dwarf a tree, and stab a flower: the unset homework between margins of this makeshift pitch teaching you more than a textbook how to survive any monster’s switch. Yet as I look at your porcelain skin, their granite jowls, I wonder if you’ll ever know how to dodge bruises on your shins from studded boots, be clever enough to tackle fouls with something more than inkstained fists and feet. Perhaps you’ll be too vulnerable for living ­ not hooligan enough to trample into the sod your shadow that grows twice as fast as yourself, to sample punches below the belt from one you know without flinching. I can’t prevent crossbones on your knees turn bullies into cement ­ or confiscate the sun they’ll puncture and put out. In their robust world I’m no Amazon. I can only scream inside without a shout for you not to inherit my fragility: never to love too much or be aged as I was by youth’s anxiety. Patricia McCarthy ​
Patricia McCarthy WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE POEM? It is a poem about a mother’s, or the poet’s, struggles to face her son maturing, and having to experience school. The mother feels powerless and she worries about her son going to school. To her, there will be challenges and struggles from which she cannot protect him. The prospect of ‘football after school’ fears her, as he “dribbles the sun about the place”, which conveys how she thinks the football, as the “sun”, will become his life, and will become his focus rather than his mother. Her son will be covered in mud ‘warpaint’ and speak another language, a language which is more ‘common’. The mother is caring for her son. Insecurity is a key role in how the mother feels, as she becomes more distant to what she believes is her fragile son with his ‘porcelain skin’ which might break. McCarthy explores the idea of growing up being inevitable and appears convinced that her son is going to grow up to be “common”. The mother worries that the world of school will be violent and aggressive. This can also be viewed as referring to life in general where she will be powerless to protect him. ‘I can’t prevent/crossbones on your knees’. She hopes that he will not be too fragile and struggle to cope. She finally talks about herself and how she is fragile. She wants him to avoid what she went through by loving too much (the wrong person?) or being aged by the anxieties of youth, worrying too much about things when she was young. Perhaps she has been scarred by life’s experiences and doesn’t want the same for her son. WHAT ARE THE MAIN IDEAS AND THEMES? ­Perceived pain and struggles of growing up ­Letting go of children to allow them to find their way in life. ­Insecurity and worry of parents ­Parental protection and guidance ­Football as an image and metaphor of a rougher, more dangerous life. WHAT ARE THE ASPECTS OF STYLE WHICH ARE EFFECTIVE? ● The use of alliteration produces an image of potential violence ­ “stiff striped dagger”.The ‘s’ sound is threatening. ● There are threatening images’ ‘warpaint slicked over your face’ and ‘your school tie a stiff striped dagger’ suggesting the dangers of a football game and of life at school in general. ● Football is the main metaphor as a game of ‘warpaint’, ‘kicks’ ‘bruises’ and ‘studded boots’; football is a metaphor for the rough and tumble of the world of big school and life. ● There are references to life being unfair as well as violent ‘punches below the belt’ and ‘bullies’ in the ‘robust world’ of school. ● It is a complicated rhyme scheme; ababcdc which suggests the turmoil and fears of the mother/speaker