Empire of the Sun

Poetry

Photo by British Library on Unsplash

The best of us fell on the Somme, Verdun, Passchendaele,
Our luckier cousins long ago set off across the broad Atlantic.
Convicts moved straight to the antipodes
To the Swan River of Western Australia
Convict scum of the East End born to live again.
The ragged Scots, after Culloden,
So many Irish everywhere in the Empire,
The Raj spice and opium settlements in Shanghai,
Every mountain climbed
All oceans crossed.