GHOST TOWNS IN NORTH WALES
We walk in upland dales past roofless towns.
The wind off glowering crags is
Muffled by slate fence rows: mansized
Slabs ragged from edge to edge,
Planted in soil too thin to bury the dead.
These blue-black panels, weathering grey,
Echo the softly slurring gutterals
Of short and sturdy dark-haired Celts:
Miners who with their wives and children
Walked these paths some forty years ago.
Their boys at twelve did not join boy scout
Troops but took their futile candles
And six-foot iron drill rods
To brave the brimstone depths they’d
Long been warned about by chapel preachers.
Each night they hurried out for a wash
And supper and choir practice, that
Other world that kept them sane and literate
Along with lunchtime meetings where
Roberts’ Rules governed debates.
Empty now are the slate caverns. Vandalized
Is the manager’s house in the grove.
Open to wind and hail, the miners’ homes
Welcome the chimney swifts while
Waiting for men who never returned from war.
We point binoculars at hardy sheep
Cropping the mountain meadows:
Their lambs are radioactive since Chernoble.
A wagtail showers himself
In acid rainfall blown here from New York.
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