With thanks to GERALDINE GREEN

with your flags and cathedrals hands across the water ferry boats

and needling scouse humour with its pans filled with copper

scoured by silver in the slave ships from west india and africa

and spices and donuts and here in the kop we chant you alive

each saturday in our red strip and the toffees sweet as blue honey!

oldest team in the country everton ever ton ever ton!

liiiiiiiiiiiverpoool liveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerpool! chanting over the mersey

where monks used to ferry and oliver cromwell fought the cavaliers

in the greenfields of bromborough on the wirral sister peninsula

and the banks of the mersey saw bloodshed and fighting and the irish

came and settled and added to the glory and the mud and guinness

and songs and tapestry of our gorgeous liverpool home!

that sings itself alive with each twist and turn of the tide and the river

that sends its heartbeats far and wide: america china india

and they all come to you liverpool great mother loded city

of the atlantic north west! oh yes, you silver mudded ferried

lightfilled mersey carrying in music and giving yourself in culture

your twin cathedrals guarding hope street and the liver birds proud

as laurel crowned bards posing on the finest architecture in europe

and one of the seven wonders of the world! dancing in st george's hall

a hallowed place famous for infamous trials

and the young boy and his dad flying his kite on your banks

one evening in november -- yes, you've seen it all great river

holy mother of mercied rawness buried beneath your alluvial soil

the bones of sailors heroes slaves footballers dreams dreamsellers

and martyrs. echoing and swinging over the mersey ferried

from side to side in the great swing and roar of your tides

your mouth has seen battleships and cruise liners in its time

and will see more: dockers strikers rockers rollers priests reformers

felicia hemans bessie braddock john lennon 8 from 8 in 2008!

as beat poet allen ginsberg said -- liverpool, you're the centre

of consciousness of the human universe and the river rolls

and sighs and the people cheer and i hear my husband's

old dad cry ' oh yes! as he drives his black taxi round his beloved city.