Across the city the emperor called
For recruits to join the legions
Travel to new and strange lands
And conquer for covetous reasons
As sun beat down they trained their men
To fight for colonisation,
Taking with them skills and knowledge
Introducing urbanisation.
Past mountains, lakes and plains they marched
Battalions stood United
Crossing countries, rivers, sea,
Arriving uninvited.
Invasion, yet they brought with them
Progression, innovation;
Technology since lost in ages dark
Transforming a whole nation.
Roads of stone, heated floors
Domestic sanitation,
Walls dividing tribes and clans
Fuelling aggravation.
Yet Britain’s climate, wet and dour,
It’s warriors and chief,
Sent Rome’s great fighters fleeing home
Struck dumb in disbelief,
That this small nation could be such
A hostile, retched place,
And Rome needed protecting
From the Jutes and Angles race.
So after Constantine’s withdrawal
Britain re-emerged anew,
Rebirthing of a greater nation,
Than the one the romans slew.
Left behind their legacy
Culture, architecture
But no longer an unwitting, oppressed,
Out-posted prefecture.
She's a woman with a heart of a honey badger
and a will like a raging tiger.
She led her people against mighty Rome
in defense of the place that they called home.
Red haired queen, she was called.
She was one who was witty and bold.
She held the banner of the Iceni
in her bid for faithful victory.
But victory was for fate to decide,
and in the many, it was bound to reside.
The great red-haired queen met her demise,
with the tale of her legend on the rise.
And even if thousand years would pass by,
the legend of her name would never die;
Her greatness still lives in memory
and enshrined in Britain's great history.
*In dedication to queen Boudica of the Iceni tribe, as immortalized in ROK*
April 19, 2023
Of all the things I learned in School
Empire was the thing that most touched me
At first I was seduced by stories being told
Of how great the British empire used to be .
Then I started reading, Doing my research
Pretty soon my feelings began to change
To rule another people by the imposition of your will
To me began to feel a little strange .
I think it was the moment I read of Boudica
and the rising of her small Iceni tribe
Revolting against oppression , Rape and cruelty
Despite paying every Roman tax and bribe.
I understood her feeling,
I know I would feel the same
Revulsion and revenge
Would soon replace the shame .
I don't understand your culture
So you must submit to mine
That is what empire building
Brought to a child's mind.
greed and acquisition
Driving the ambition of small minded fools
Who will rule by imposition
Those who would not be ruled.
These things I told my teacher
As I put my history books away
My feelings about empire
Remain the same today.
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