Dust motes reflected light
in the still air behind chapel windows. The smell of mould the only paean in a vernacular of damp. A last stand of hymn books regrouped at the end of pews as the rain finally came in. In the dream time there were walls, ditches, sheepfolds, homesteads, castles, stone circles. With tireless devotion time and weather smoothed and reduced the traces, grass healing the scars. . Below, the purleius of Raven and Curlew of wolf and wildcat. Roman roads, imperial courts Warlord's Lys ancient homesteads, polished smooth under grass their memories lying like lazy beasts asleep in the sun. Of course, they weren't the first here. Megalith builders wandered along the dod man's sight lines, hilltop notch and tump, looking for minerals bell pits sounding for magnetic iron. The romans looked for lead and found gold at Daulcothi. All left their signatures for the company of mine adventurers to read and consider. At the dawn of the industrial age oak, elm, ash and birch were sucked into hungry iron furnaces. The wolf retreated into the mountains. Methusalem Jones woke from a dream legend says saw vastness of slate at Diphwys. So the old man mined, pulling what was inside, out. Grey mountains of negative space looming over the boom town. The miners had given their souls to the chapel the best part of their lives to the owners their money to the company store. When the market for slate fell away, with the speed and finality of a rock dropped down a shaft the owners looked away, picked up other shiny things. All the hoggia chwarel cast aside, their monument: the crabbed handwriting of history on the hillside. Longhand, copper plate. Blottings, scratchings, overwriting, crossings out. A silence descended. Up on the tips a few old boys worked a slab here, a pillar there... robbing the dry stone mills and barracks building shelters, stumbling over the ruins- Heath Robinson, their ropeways and machinery. In the 21st century The new quarryman emerged. Tooled up with big Cat and bang, a handful of men where once thousands toiled. Where the old man walked nine miles to work he rolls up in the HiLux, Costa coffee on the go. Bothering the daylight chambers before burying them in a mountain of traprock. the locals work the mine with credit card readers no jwmpars, or black powder just smoke and mirrors. Checking the tourists' tickets no callouses on their hands, just time. The old chambers are rigged with underground trampolines, Zip Lines, son et lumiere; things the old man could not have imagined as he toiled down there in candlelight. Topsides, the mountain bikers descend the singletrack, speeding down, facebook ready. In the north, a chromatograph of shanty towns spreads, stained around Primark, Top Shop and Costa. Handy for Snowdonia, capital of adventure the trompe l'oeul wonderland. Perched in the Cat's cosy cab. the lone quarryman looks down on the chaos of his morning's work The planners quarried a hole in the national park for just this eventuality. Brown envelopes were not in vain. Cut to soft focus his taid climbing up the rock to drill a shot hole. A cut of slab wagons comes groaning up from Tuxford Uncle Dewi at the crimp. Other men everywhere, building, working. Smoke, steam, shouts, laughter water wheels turning, saws screaming. The mwg cur y pen hangs over the pit. He blinks, shakes his head Moves the joystick the Cat's arm obeys moves towards the No.9 floor drumhouse, reducing it and the graffiti of a horse inscribed 1896 instantly. Slate dust rises shapes catching like ghosts on the breeze. Another scribble on the palimpsest. mwg cur y pen- the smoke from blasting, literally "headache smoke".
6 Comments
Laura
11/10/2018 12:33:57 am
I cried.
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Iain Robinson
11/10/2018 06:16:36 pm
Ah, I'm very sorry that the poem upset you, but thank you so much for your observations and very perceptive thoughts. Most young people, through no fault of their own, just don't "get" the industrial history unless it's packaged for them and turned into a video game experience or some kind of a thrill ride. All power to the folk that run underground experiences, they are helping to stem the tide of ignorance. There's also the fairly keen need to make money locally, and industrial archaeology is always going to come off worse there. It upsets me deeply.
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Laura
12/10/2018 02:28:21 am
Oh how interesting, all of it :) Love the part about having Petra have to cry in approval, that's so terribly moving... But no, for me it wasn't really being upset, it was being overwhelmed by emotion, which to us women is not at all the same thing :) A big part of me feels like my kid, and his peers, are really missing out, but half of what they're learning is way beyond me, so perhaps it all balances out... But it's still up to us "old folks" to be there to explain the how's and why's of past events since they nearly always link us to the future.
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Laura
13/10/2018 01:30:51 am
Ok, I think I see what you mean by the powder houses; they appear to be unique and personalized, or at at least built-to-suit, rather like the barns that I hunt down. This week my work computer died and I drove some back-up disks up to the repair shop, a good half hour away. The road I took I had noticed before had a couple barns but this time I went further and counted at least 8, only two of which I have photographed but the light was wrong then... It becomes like a treasure hunt (haha! can't believe I just fell into that one :) of discovery, photography, and research and it's just plain fun. Not to mention the possible historical rewards down the road. I imagine you've had your share of revisits that were huge let-downs though. (Full circle to the palimpsest ghosts....)
Iain Robinson
13/10/2018 10:34:48 am
Thanks, Laura- yes, it is like hunting; the kind where nobody gets hurt...it's also like being a detective, because I search these places out on the 1880 maps, then look on Google earth to see if there is anything left, then plan a visit...only to find that what I thought was a powder house was a tree and a shadow :-) My great regret is not having covered the ones that have been destroyed recently, but the hunt goes on and it is hugely enjoyable, like you with the barns. And, you and I, we are recording something that will soon be gone. Recording physically and metaphorically. Yes, full circle to the palimpsest :-)
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Iain Robinson
13/10/2018 08:21:39 pm
Meant to say, Laura, thank you to Joseph for calling me an eagle spirit...I'll take that one :-) It would be very handy to be able to soar like an eagle and find the mines that are so difficult to access! Thanks again.
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