Where are you goin’? Out.
When are you back? Later.
What are you doin’? Stuff. With the lads.
Down the seafront with the lads
To Bug Rock, maybe a swim with Babby Martin
He swam like a seal and we all learned from him
At the prom steps and the platform.
Often we all trooped towards Sandycove
Along the water’s edge, past the pinkeen
Pools and crab caverns. Jumping from rock to rock
Trying not to slip into the water.
Sometimes walking on the wide wall high over the platform.
Jumping the gaps carelessly. The same high wall
Where Shep Redmond fell a long fall down
Onto the concrete path.
We all rushed down, we thought he was dead.
Dazed we staggered him home to his Ma in Glasthule.
He was lucky.
On down to Sandycove Harbour
Where the Lovely Mammies and the Crying Babies
Sat on the sand in the Sandy Cove.
Then up the hill and down the slope into
The Forty Foot Gentlemen Only, where the men swam.
Round the back to sit on the granite hill
Over the children’s pool where we also learned to swim
Two strokes took you end to end.
Outside the little pool
If you were good enough you swam out to the Ring Rock
A big rock with a metal spike and a ring on it for a boat.
‘Who put the Ring on the Ring Rock’, we sang and wondered.
Some poor divil of a sailor had that difficult task,
Maybe a hundred years ago with precious little thanks.
Work was hard and men were cheap back then
After the swim we sat up on the granite hill in the afternoon sun.
Lots of the men sat there in the sun, naked, so we sat there in the sun,
Naked too. And us not used to being naked in public,
Not knowing where to look, or where to put our hands.
Sunbathing with the men, feeling manly and looking manly,
Aroused with the grownupness of it all.
We were watching the men, only years later did we
Realize that some of the men were watching us.
But we were with the lads, and the lads knew stuff.
Like who was to be avoided.
Innocense.
Don’t go far? No.
Swim in not out. Sure.
And mind you stay out of trouble.
Yeah Ma, Yeah.
Martin Swords, May, 2019