David Beckham

The British Poet Laureate, Carole Ann Duffy, has penned a new poem for her job — “Achilles,” about the Achilles heel injury suffered by soccer star David Beckham.

According to a Telegraph report by Nick Collins, in the poem, “tributes to Beckham’s ability with a football are mixed with references to the classical myth in which the warrior is let down by his one weakness – his heel – while fighting at Troy.”

Explains Duffy, Beckham “is almost a mythical figure himself, in popular culture. The most tragic image was him being unable to walk and crying on the side of the pitch.”

As the poem puts it, in part:

… when Odysseus came, with an
athlete’s build, a sword and a shield,
he followed him to the battlefield,
the crowd’s roar,

And it was sport, not war,
his charmed foot on the ball …

But then his heel, his heel, his heel …