The boys were still singing, and the summer sun still shining
as they sailed out past Helen’s Bay, Crawfordsburn, Ballyholme,
where they had built sandcastles as children. They swam
the rest of that summer, and into autumn, off the shingle
of Seaford, Brighton, and Eastbourne, before sailing off again
to shovel sand by the spadeful into bags they stacked neatly,
a different kind of sandcastle; they dug in for the duration;
it’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go.
A century later, on Portstewart Strand, stencil template and rake in hand
we rearranged the sand, made a shadow soldier, cap raised in farewell,
wrote your name beneath with our fingers, Robert Atkinson,
so you stood out from the crowd, and dated it, 2nd July 1916.
We stood back and admired our handiwork, a soldier played the last post,
the whole beach fell silent, but the wind still flapped the flags,
waves, from storms hundreds of miles away, still curled and crashed
on the shore; and it must have been the salt that stung my eyes.
We stepped back, climbed up, looked down from the headland,
November sun, slanting low from Inishowen, cast shadows
on a fine company of men, full of grit, a hundred of them, filed in,
“tallest to the right, shortest to the left, in three ranks, SIZE!”
We stood together, gave our last salute, said our final farewell,
and waited for the tide to come in, to take you with it again,
grain by grain, unmaking you for the last time; Bonsoir old thing,
cheerio chin-chin, napoo, toodle-oo, good-bye-ee.
David Atkinson 