After the Raj
Last outpost of the Empire

It’s February at the Wall’s end,
The turning of the sea.
No longer under military control,
Gulls lift in a free wind.

The Romans have gone.
They’ve left their roads behind.
Their Wall. We’re grateful.

This Raj once had fine buildings,
Mimicking temples, statues of worthies
Staring out at horizons,
A sense of awe in local populations.

Empires must be good eventually.
They leave their laws behind,
Are generally benign in their effect,
Use power wisely.

The old lie.

What is left here along the Wall
is so much a whisper of itself
it’s hard to catch; slavery, abuse,
those racial taunts against the Britons,
second class citizens of subjugated lands,
cannon fodder in Empires’s unrelated wars.

The way to power still apes
The Raj, taking over bungalows,
government offices, adopting the religion
Of rulers, speaking their language
Better than they did themselves.

Of course the Romans were so long ago,
Hardly a stone stands.
Few tracks of them remain,
No empire of the powerful,
No dispossessed,
Who do not know the language
Of the victors.

Yet, Empire to Empire, some things
More enduring than the track
Of ancient Walls,
Have stayed the same.