Caphouse Colliery

Caphouse Colliery

twenty bodies wrapped in a cage
decend the shaft..
it's fast..the doors are wired
I feel a cold anxious draught
from before  time expired
I saw a dirt child..a trapper
to a door he was tied
only five years of graft
there is no dark as dark
as the black that has
never seen   sunlight
a solid  black  curtain
we turned off out modest lamp..
and the blackness absorbed us
sucked our bones clean..
and  disorientated us..
I hear women scream
and chains creaking
a pony dashed oblivious
I felt his tail lashed
and furious in the dust
and rats scratching at
the crust, where creepy
crawlies stream, 
men thrust for bread
to live, in the bowels
of this dreaded Hell
to toil beneath the sod
a mile deep and in peril..
and then a mile in..
I saw Anderson /Boy
Trepanner..panzza
as a giants toy .
and dodged the
gullick dobson prop
hitting my head on 
the roof drops..
as time ticked out by
I saw Joy,
a monsterous machine
to conquer and win the coal
the height of modern mining..
to rip out all the seams
where coal was hiding..
I saw the peak of an industry
for one moment 
my heart could burst with pride..
but I was gutted..
to see it still..frozen
in it's grave
never to rumble into life
dead ..extinct..it died in the prime
of it's industry..
I laid hands on cold metal
where men with dreams sweated
and hopes...now  shattered
chock fitters, sparkies, haulage hands..
back-up, deputies, face men, 
shot firers,paddydrivers,button men,
tail gate rip, overmen gaffers..
shaftsmen, ventilation staff, 
colliers..the back bone of industry
We salute you..there are none like you.
.
(this poem is for me, after the death of the British Coal Industry, and the trip I made yesterday down a museum mine in Yorkshire)