Nineteen Thousand, Two Hundred and Forty

Did you see them, did you?
They did not speak but they were here once more.
Marching on our streets,
Waiting once more at our train stations.
They did not speak in words we heard.
Yet they were here and home once more.
Nineteen thousand, two hundred and forty.

Sometimes we heard the echos of song.
A song from long a go, a song of futility.
Today they lay not in some corner,
of a foreign field, row on neat row.
Right among us they did linger, a life remembered.
Ghosts of a century of time for us.
Nineteen thousand, two hundred and forty.

They visited our everyday.
They traveled along our streets.
They traveled on our transport.
Yet no chatter was heard, other than of song.
Just echos of our past now.
Yet for them time stopped on just one day.
Nineteen thousand, two hundred and forty.

Did you see them, did you?
Did you hear their song?
Did you feel your heart soar and then break, as they marched on by?
Did tears come to your eye?
Did you take a card they offered?
A memory of just one day and one person out of 
Nineteen thousand, two hundred and forty.

 My words this day were inspired by this moving tribute to commemorate the first day of the Battle of the Somme and lives lost. No previous advance notice of this moving art project was given to the public which made it all the more poignant. This one day these silent walking ghosts of lives lost appeared in many towns and cities across the country and then just disappeared.