“Real men don’t write poems. Everybody knows
they touch emotions with suspicion, those
girlish sensations women talk about -
Or if they feel them, never let them out,
or show them. It’s a game
in which the forfeit is unending shame.

“They sometimes shout – at football matches, say,
where what they feel can just be laughed away,
not linked with any passion bottled up inside.
Men don’t admit that swelling surge of pride
that lifts them up. When all is done,
a man’s a man, you see; his son’s his son.

“Love’s not an issue, never thought about
once boys have left their prams; no doubt
it’s there, but just not mentioned, clean forgot
in all that messy swirl of daily life. It’s not
a word we use. No, pride and love
don’t have that ring of valour; don’t sound tough.

“If men do feel these things, they keep them hid.
We know men don’t write poems…

…That’s bollocks. This one did.”