coalmining

131d

In the blunted night of the coal shed,
without a torch, my fingers dig
among the coal for the coal.
Hear it scutter into the bucket…

—Brian McCabe, “Coal”
published in BODY PARTS, @canongatebooks 1999

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/coal/

#Scottish #literature #MayDay #InternationalWorkersDay #poem #poetry #coalmining

Coal
Brian McCabe

In the blunted night of the coal shed,
without a torch, my fingers dig
among the coal for the coal.
Hear it scutter into the bucket.

Something else is gathered, uttered
from a darker place where memory digs
and throws its coal into a bucket –
as if a ghost stuttered, spoke:

My father clears his throat, curses
the government: ‘Thirty years in Rosewell,
in Bilston Glen, in Monktonhall –
and what is there to show for it?’

And what is there to show for it?
Flattened sites, non-places, absences
surrounded by meaningless villages.
The bars look like air-raid shelters.

‘If the shops need iron grilles here,
they’ll need them everywhere.
Like the miners of Monktonhall
we’ll all know what siege means.’

I stumble from the dark into the dark
of that night into this, to light a fire,
to watch the flames rise and flare
into eloquent tongues.

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