To the Future

To the Future

My world was taught in your history class,
In half a chapter your teacher rushed through.
Somewhen between a turning point
And some other event which we never knew.
My world just probably made you bored,
Learning the dates of a notable few –
But not of my name – I never was found
In the textbooks on which you scribbled and drew.

Maybe then I was nobody special,
Somebody whom you can safely ignore.
Never improved a million lives –
Never brought hatred, hunger, and war.
Maybe then I was nobody special,
Maybe achieved next to nothing at all.
But still I meant to a couple of dozen,
And for those the closest, an awful lot more.

You may then think that I was unknown,
Unrecorded in sadness and mirth.
Save for the parish’s register-book
Where my name’s still getting its three-entries’ worth.
Maybe you gotten my census or tax,
My causes of death and my weighing at birth.
But never be thinking that this is my lot,
All that I left from my time on this Earth.

Never get thinking that I didn’t count,
Or thinking I’m someone you never need.
For all that you laugh at my primitive ways,
Just never forget that we nobodies breed.
Even the famous had parents of unknowns,
As did all the riff-raff who helped them succeed.
So there must be hundreds, or thousands by your time,
In whose chain-genetics I mean much indeed.

It is claimed that anyone living in Britain today and whose family have been living here for several generations will lmost certainly be a direct descendent of King Edward the Third, who died in 1377.   Of course, if I’m, say, 24 generations down the line, that means I have over 830,000 great*21 grandparents, though quite a few of those will be dupliates.  Not that the poems about him, of course.