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      November 10, 2019The Three DegreesUmit Singh Dhuga

      i.m. Dalian Atkinson (1968-2016)

      He’ll cross that bridge before he gets to it.
      Cole finds Dozzell in acres of space.
      Dozzell serves the ball up on a plate
       
      for Atkinson whose blistering pace
      leaves the polyester-short-shorted halfback
      stranded. Atkinson chips the keeper, races
       
      to the corner-flag (where the stewards are slack
      at their stewardship over the Greene King Stand).
      And bows. How do you feel about him being black?
       
      Ipswich puts this question—this is England—
      to Mrs Crawford, whose one solemn decree
      is that you don’t take the biscuits, understand?
       
      You don’t take. You ask. So “The Three Degrees”
      were formed about three miles from Ipswich.
      From the 1992-to-’93
       
      season, this: In his own half of the pitch
      with a one-touch trap from a lofted ball
      (he’s done well there!) that forthwith lets him ditch
       
      his marker he ignores Dean Saunders’ call
      on the right flank and skips past two more
      Wimbledon players and slows to a crawl
       
      and you had to have known then that he’d score
      because before he’s anywhere near
      the edge of the eighteen-yard-box the last four
       
      defenders stop running and Peter Fear
      (of all players) looks back to Perry Digweed
      (who’s minding net) and that’s when Atkinson spears
       
      the lower half of the ball with the speed
      of a toe-stub against a kitchen table’s
      leg. The goalkeeper (the papers will read)
       
      was on-rushing. He wasn’t. He’s able
      to steady himself for the arched chip’s flounce
      and leap with his left arm at full stretch. Rob Earle
       
      watches as the ball finds the time to bounce
      once in the six-yard-box before it ends
      up in the back of the net. 3-2’s a trounce
       
      when you lose to a goal like that, when you defend
      their counter-attack of your counter-attack
      in the nineties in a country called England.
       
      So how do you feel about him being black?

      —from Poets Respond
      November 10, 2019

      __________

      Umit Singh Dhuga:  (web)

      from Poets Respond

      Umit Singh Dhuga

      “A police officer has been charged with murder, after three years of painful procedural wrangling, in the death of Dalian Atkinson. Atkinson was tasered to death in the early hours of August 15, 2016. He was a celebrated black English football player who was part of the famed attacking trio known, when I was growing up in England in the 1980s, as ‘The Three Degrees’—you will note that the press was not exactly politically correct back then (or now). I found that the terza rima form suited the subject of three black athletes who connected so beautifully on and off the sports field and who inspired so many of us ‘coloured’ boys in England to persevere in sports despite racist abuse. It was thought to be ‘cute’ and ‘clever’ to call Cole, Dozzell, and Atkinson ‘The Three Degrees’ because they were black, played with flair, and wore stylish clothes. But we know now, and we should have known then, that this is racist. The fact that the Crown Prosecutor has—this week—laid charges against the rather taser-happy police in West Mercia, England, marks a milestone in the turbid British history of race relations. This poem celebrates Atkinson’s astonishing achievements as an athlete, but also points up the painful question which his first employer—Ipswich Town Football Club—had famously asked when Atkinson moved to Ipswich from Newcastle: ‘How do you feel about him being black?’”

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