The Last Anzac.(Poetry)(Poem)

 
   THE LAST ANZAC 
 
   He has gone out now 
   further than the little beach 
   that dreamed his death. 
 
   At 103 the years had not condemned--but 
   wearied him 
   he no longer believed being 16 
 
   mattered. He never rehearsed it 
   in words with anyone 
   and it never became the fixed bayonet 
 
   he eschewed in combat 
   and that had later rusted into a kind of 
   forgetfulness. "Gallipoli 
 
   was Gallipoli" his only answer to the 
   countless questions he'd always been 
   asked that had no answer. Decades ago 
 
   he had left behind the damp hole 
   he. lay in with lice and flies; 
   enteric fever and bad beef. 
 
   His memory had ...