It was in this place, in those days, in those years,
when rivers ran blackened as night in the sky,
when open coke oven doors lit the valley red,
when green fields drowned in spit black spoil.
It was in this place, where slow hunger and poverty
stamped itself down, slammed its feet on the ground,
when children starved and bellies slept empty.
In this place, soup kitchens fed families, hunger thinned.
In this place infants died too easy, disease and death,
stared through every open window, every latched door,
except the rich, those few living in their great houses.
And men marched away to far cities to ask for help,
plead assistance for so many, in a time of great need.
Men marched the length, the breadth of the country,
to be met by slit closed eyes of cold indifference.
She told the stories of those days, of those years,
and when it was her time to pack, to leave,
she was small, just twelve years of age.
She was a small child travelling as a stranger
in those greyed out days of the great depression,
think now of a small child travelling from a mining valley
to work in a bankers grand Chelsea mansion.
You spoke of survival, the cruel vicious lips,
the sneering, vindictive, unsmiling eyed housekeeper,
just because you couldn’t speak words of Welsh -
“Dicsion Davy”* she called you, words that haunted you.
Shame on her for her derision and shallowness,
I wish I could have said that to you then my mother.
You worked as a…
