WAR!
When I was eight years old
I ran wild with my cousins
On the sands.
Our families shared a tent
From May to September every year.
We met our mothers after school.
They had been sitting in deck chairs all day
Knitting winter woolies.
We ate from a card-table,
Sometimes paddling our feet at the same time
In the high tides.
*
When I was nine years old
The sands were forbidden.
Only the soldiers were free
To laze on the beach.
But they had to keep one eye
On their machine-guns.
We gazed at the sea
Through barbed wire,
Till we were removed and sent
Into the distant country.
It was a case of
Paradise Lost.
And we never regained it.
*
