David Hopper, General Secretary of the Durham Miners' Association
'But you can't fall in love, make your homes, raise your children over filthy holes in the ground. You were born in history: you didn't make it, I know. Entrance into toil and filth is tragedy. It cannot be justified: never glorified. Accept this desperate birth, hold your head high, and walk away.'
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Orphaned generations/Whose bellies were filled, whose backs were clothed by dreadful toil/In filth, in factories, furnaces, and pits...
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Generations pour out of the factory gates... |
Following a young man,
Diminished, shapeless,
Desultory on dirty streets,
I felt the ground shaking, and saw the graves opening,
And ten thousand bodies in blue overalls
Emerged, blinking, like moles into the sun.
I watched dazed, shell-shocked generations
Pour out from factory gates.
Big Bang.
Entropy.
End of days siren blasts.
And hordes push open broken gates, and escape
The ruins of the modern city.
Refugees stretch out in long lines to the horizon.
Monstrous Filthy Revolution spawned so many,
So many,
(I didn't know death had undone so many)
And neglected,
Starved, and broken,
Dying (or murdered by cold iron hands),
Abandoned millions.
Defiant, with automatic hand,
She pushes loose hair
From a tear-stained cheek,
One of orphaned generations
Whose bellies were filled,
Whose backs were clothed
By dreadful toil,
In filth, in factories, furnaces, and pits,
Called from labour
Which broke her body, and broke her heart.
Leave your homes and families,
Leave your lives and loves,
Your stories, songs, your clans, and ancient feuds,
And seek another way.
Our whole world undermined,
There is nowhere else to go,
Nothing to do,
But fall into the Abyss.
Lost boys and girls
Roam the streets,
Limp on blackened feet,
Looking for their lives.
But freed from man-forged manacles,
End of days siren blasts.
And hordes push open broken gates, and escape
The ruins of the modern city.
Refugees stretch out in long lines to the horizon.
Monstrous Filthy Revolution spawned so many,
So many,
(I didn't know death had undone so many)
And neglected,
Starved, and broken,
Dying (or murdered by cold iron hands),
Abandoned millions.
Defiant, with automatic hand,
She pushes loose hair
From a tear-stained cheek,
One of orphaned generations
Whose bellies were filled,
Whose backs were clothed
By dreadful toil,
In filth, in factories, furnaces, and pits,
Called from labour
Which broke her body, and broke her heart.
Leave your homes and families,
Leave your lives and loves,
Your stories, songs, your clans, and ancient feuds,
And seek another way.
Our whole world undermined,
There is nowhere else to go,
Nothing to do,
But fall into the Abyss.
Lost boys and girls
Roam the streets,
Limp on blackened feet,
Looking for their lives.
But freed from man-forged manacles,
Some will run in the sun
And sing a new song,
The soft, bright Eloi;
And sing a new song,
The soft, bright Eloi;
The inheritors.
.
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