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 loaded 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 rolled 

and sighed and the people cheered and I heard my husband's 

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