Visit To A Colliery: Pit Village, Beamish

Visit to a Colliery: Pit Village, Beamish A landscape in the shadow of a pit, Coal dust has settled everywhere like sand Even the cobbled streets are smeared with it Underground is seamed like arteries Of Saturn, Satan, long funereal bands The ghosts of miners dead two centuries Fourteen years old, coal pickers became men Son followed father, dismal lives pre-planned Into the foetid depths of that black wen Even their snot, their tears, were streaked with coal Their lungs were silted up, sweat, treacle-tanned Ran down their backs. Mines claimed them, flesh and soul They toiled like moles, wriggled like graveyard grubs Some blotted out the dark in a steel band Or turned to Masons, Methodists or pubs Some dreamt of gas explosions, Poor Relief When comrade's death would mark them like a brand No tin-bath scrub could wash away that grief