Casablanca

by Roger McGough

You must remember this
To fall in love in Casablanca
To be the champion of Morocco.

The size of tuppence
Photographs show Uncle Bill holding silver cups
Wearing sepia silks and a George Formby grin.

Dominique
Had silent film star looks. With brown eyes
Black hair and lips full to the brim, she was a race apart.

He brought her over
To meet the family early on. An exotic bloom
In bleak post-war Bootle, Just the once.

Had there been children
There might have been more contact. But letters,
Like silver cups, were few and far between.

At seventy-eight
It's still the same old story. Widowed and lonely
The prodigal sold up and came back home.

I met him that first Christmas
He spoke in broken scouse. Apart from that
He looked like any other bow-legged pensioner.

He had forgotten the jockey part
The fight for love and glory had been a brief episode
In a long, and seemingly, boring life.

It turned out
He had never felt at home there
Not a week went by without him thinking about Liverpool.

Casablanca
The airplane on the runway. She in his arms.
Fog rolling in from the Mersey. As time goes by.