THE MINER:

He had that sad, haunted & hunted, forlorn look,

Which has never been written in any known book,

Deep he went into the belly of Hades underground,

Where silence ruled & one hears not a single sound,

He was the miner:

Expression, murk marked with sore, red-eyed grime,

As his kin, digging & delving since beginning of time,

For coal of the valleys, that black gold, of life & heat,

To put on the family table, simple bread & scarce meat,

He was the miner:

Bent helmeted head, forging through corridors of dark time,

Through the breathless gritty coughs & gasping, murky slime,

With weepy bloody eye & dusty, sooty, dripping, non-stop-snot,

He forged through the black earth´s tunnels, cracked & fit to rot,

He was the miner:

For a mere pittance, & with no light of the living to call his own,

He carried on slogging; after all, it was all he had ever known,

The unspoken rule, bestowed upon him by his family´s men-folk,

The pits, the dust, the death that would slowly & surely choke,

He was the miner:

The fear he carried always with him, of the tumbling falling slag,

The weight that pulled him down, & with him, he always dragged,

He knew no other life, but he wanted different for his little boy,

Where instead of a lump of coal, he´d be able to play with a toy,

He was the miner:

It was different way back then, when he was but a small lad,

Small boys, yet babes, left school, & down pits followed their dads,

Into the frightening, dark, rumbling pit, of the dragon´s cavernous gut,

Where to the child, the devils lurked, & everything was covered in smut,

He was the miner:

Now gone & buried, deep beneath Cymru´s green & heaving breast,

Claimed by the earth, he´d loved & toiled, & where he now can rest,

 And upon the Brecon´s ragged breath, the collier sadly sighed,

Where he lived & worked as man & boy & where he proudly died,

He was the miner:

He had toiled in gloom, but with a glimmering dream,

Determined that in the pits, his son would never be seen,

But instead, would be in a place, breathing fresh, sweet air,

With the wind & the rain playing free with his child´s young hair,

He would never be a miner: