Black GoldA Poem by David Lewis PagetThe
Dad was dour, his face was sour When
he came home from the pit, He
looked like a furnace stoker but That
wasn’t the half of it… His
fists were like a couple of hams And
he used the blighters, too, The
Mam would hear his foot on the step And
hurry to serve his stew. She
wore his bruises over her face, Her
arms and her legs and more, I’d
seen her body all over then For
I was coming-up four, I’d
watched the blood run down her leg As
she cleaned herself with a rag, Whenever
he’d come home roaring drunk, Use
Mam as a punching bag! My
sister Else was barely ten When
he made her work at the pit, She
struggled to push a cart of coal Until
she was almost sick. The
manager was a brutal man With
a knotted, leather strap, If
Else was slow or got vertigo He’d
lay it across her back! I
never heard Mam complain to him, I
guess that she didn’t dare, She’d
rub some cream into Else’s wounds And
run a brush through her hair. ‘It’s
hard, but you’ll toughen up, my girl, He
said, as a sort of scold, ‘You’d
better respect what we’re mining here, Just
think of it as Black Gold!’ ‘Think
of it as Black Gold,’ he’d said… (The
sort that gets into your pores, The
dust that gives you a crippled lung And
your skin gets covered in sores. The
cough that’s keeping the house awake When
everyone needs to sleep, The
sulphur smell round the chimney-piece As
you watch your mother weep!) He
dragged me out, and he took me in When
I was only eight, He
said, ‘Now look here, fella-me-lad, It’s
time that you pulled your weight!’ They
started me at tuppence a day And
sat me down in the shaft, I
had to open and close a trap To
help to create the draught. The
hours were long, the days were long We
worked a twelve hour shift, It
took me an hour to get to the face, Clambering
over the drift, I
didn’t get time to go to school, Still
sign my name with an ‘x’, But
I’m learning now at the Institute Just
to try for a little respect! When
I was ten, they sent me down With
a pick to the old coal face, Where
miners hammered and banged like hell And
they tried to make me race, Poor
Else, still pushing the trucks of coal, Her
back had formed in a hump, The
boys would whistle and jeer at her For
her legs were like two stumps. New-fangled
ships were coming in, The
ones of steel and steam, ‘It’s
only good for the working man,’ The
Dad said: ‘Good for the team!’ But
some of the stopes were caving in The
mine was in full retreat, We’d
pull what pillars of coal were left And
send them up to the street. The
Dad was working the furthest pitch While
Else sat crippled and old, She’d
ripped a tendon and looked quite lost As
she sat by a pillar of coal, She
waved me away to the further stope And
attacked the coal with a pick, The
pillar came suddenly crashing down And
the roof - it followed it! I
never saw Mam cry for The Dad, She
cried for our Else instead, ‘She
never had much of a life at all, I’m
glad the old bugger’s dead!’
Now the years have passed, and I understand That
The Dad was true to his kind, He
never had much of a chance at all And
he’s buried, still in the mine! David
Lewis Paget © 2012 David Lewis PagetFeatured Review
Reviews
|
StatsAuthor
Related WritingPeople who liked this story also liked..
|
![[send message]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/mail.png){kind=small}
![[befriend]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/friend.png){kind=small}
first
prev
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Flag Writing
