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The Final By Stephen Foster PDF

The Final By Stephen Foster

 I cannot type. Ten books in to my work as a writer I refuse to learn,

in case improving my keyboard technique produces a side-effect. My
fear is that if I get faster, I’ll get worse. My inability comes in various
guises. I can never put a y in everything, I always reverse the au in
because, but at the moment my most oft-repeated mistake is that every
time I try ‘years’ I get ‘tears’ (t is next to y on the qwerty keyboard).
After 148 tears in existence as a football club…’
…is my first effort at an opening sentence. I’m tempted to leave it, it
reminds me of this poem by Dylan Thomas when he shifts a word
from one paradigm to another and uses an emotion to measure time;
the poem is called A Grief Ago.
I’ve seen it in the past and I’ll see it again but I doubt if I’ll see it
quite this way again: at the end of this match I turn round to see grown
men sobbing like babies, one fat man behind me wipes away his years
on the tattoos of his forearms then rests his arms on his belly while the
next batch roll down his cheeks. Perhaps when he tells his
grandchildren about this match will describe it in emotions: Once upon
a time, many tears ago…

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