The best of us British fell on the Somme, Verdun, Passchendaele,
Our luckier cousins had long ago set off across the broad Atlantic
Convicts moved straight on 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 with the spice and opium settlements in Shanghai,
Hong Kong, Ceylon
Every mountain climbed
All oceans crossed.
Now only the scrag-ends remain
Whenever I see a death date, say 1989,
I think in 1986 she had three years
Left to live
Except in this case, he was born and died in 1985.
His blue-blue eyes.
Make me  think of the Aztecs
Silky, gossamer, filmy wind-borne seed floating by
High, high, so very, very high, in  the Andes.