The Collier Poem by Richmal Byrne

He has a clack cough,
Skulks by, slag skidding
On serfdom’s slalom,
Too tired to trot
The road he ran to riot’s rule
This morn at the pit, where
Hell’s yawn swallows swarms in shifts;
He takes his cut through the black mass,
Over mists, slithering through the pickers
Grubbing for cast coal with bare knuckles.
He goes giddying, gliding forth,
Failing, falling down,
Sailing sound
Where the loose ground
Moves around
Under his boots until, still
Laced-up, traced-up,
Faced-up by the village pump,
He stops.
And there, stares with
White eyes, at the road
(black as his face)
That forks the way
To the Collier’s Arms,
And the Hill Farms,
And the scrubbed-step terrace Mams,
And the undetermined day.