Not All for Kings

The moor still breathes
where blades once met,
its soil is dark,
its memory red.

No cairn was raised,
no dirge was cried,
yet, the blood on Culloden*
has not truly died.

The sky wore grey
like widow’s thread,
while lead and steel
outpaced the dead.

Mo ghràdh, mo chridhe,
they called in vain—
my love, my heart—
then could speak no name.

They fought
for blood, for bone
for clan, for crown,
for home
beyond
the soldier’s town.

Not all for kings
or noble call—
some fought
for not to kneel at all.

Now bog and bracken
softly keep
the dreams that fell
in sudden sleep.

No saints to count,
no kin to claim,
their tartans bled
into the plain.

The songs they sang,
the words they spoke—
lie buried
beneath ash and smoke.

They died with arms
not just of steel,
but of a tongue
that would not kneel.

The Gaelic fell
beside the blade—
a love, a land
in silence laid.

No bride would wait
with braid undone,
no mother knew
what they’d become.

No carving stone,
no candle glows—
a thousand ghosts
were let to go.

Yet still at dusk,
when deer run low,
the earth recalls
the ancient woe.

A raven cries,
the thistle bends,
and in the mist,
the lost descend.

We raise no flag,
we light no parade,
we let memory dwell
in dusk and shade.

For those who stood
and could not run—
the moor remembers.
Every one.

 * Culloden: On April 16, 1746, the Jacobite Rising met a brutal end on the sodden ground of Culloden Moor. In less than an hour, the Scottish Highland way of life was shattered by British bayonets and cannon fire, marking the last pitched battle on British soil.

What followed was not just a military defeat, but a systematic campaign to dismantle a culture: the banning of the Gaelic language, the outlawing of the tartan, and the stripping of clan heritage… leaving the moor a mass grave for a dream of autonomy.

As an Indian, I see the echoes of our own history reflected in this dark chapter. We know the weight of a foreign crown that seeks to “civilise” by erasing; we have felt the same brutal hand that decimated our people, plundered our wealth, and worked tirelessly to make us feel like strangers to our own heritage.

I believe we are kin in this grief, bound by the memory of a cruelty that tried to rewrite us into nothingness. The same cold wind rattles both our bones, but we carry what they couldn’t kill: the stubborn, defiant fire of a soul that refuses to stay buried.