Balloon Fight by Roger McGough
Aug. 2nd, 2004 11:29 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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greatpoetry'This morning, the American, Steve Fossett, ended his Round-The-World balloon fight...I'm sorry, balloon "flight"...in northern India.'
- The Today Programme, Radio 4, 20 January 1997
It ended in Uttar Pradesh.
It had to.
You can't go around the world
attacking people with balloons
and expect to get away with it.
What may be mildly amusing
at children's parties
in Upper Manhattan
will not seem so funny ha ha
on the Falls Road.
How Fossett fought his way
across the former Yugoslavia
I'll never know.
Some folk never grow up.
Hang on to their childhood.
Believing in the Tooth Fairy,
watched over by the Man in the Moon.
Thank you, Mr Newsreader,
for bringing him down to earth.
For bursting his balloon.
- The Today Programme, Radio 4, 20 January 1997
It ended in Uttar Pradesh.
It had to.
You can't go around the world
attacking people with balloons
and expect to get away with it.
What may be mildly amusing
at children's parties
in Upper Manhattan
will not seem so funny ha ha
on the Falls Road.
How Fossett fought his way
across the former Yugoslavia
I'll never know.
Some folk never grow up.
Hang on to their childhood.
Believing in the Tooth Fairy,
watched over by the Man in the Moon.
Thank you, Mr Newsreader,
for bringing him down to earth.
For bursting his balloon.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-02 05:08 pm (UTC)Here are both english and german versions, and a translation of the german (it's the better lyric): http://www.inthe80s.com/redger3.shtml
no subject
Date: 2004-08-02 05:37 pm (UTC)