The White Arches of Aberfan

Poem by Mike Jenkins 2011

He writes, ‘It came about because last week my wife decided to avoid traffic queues and take the old road, so my young daughter had a clear view of the cemetery above Aberfan.’

 

THE WHITE ARCHES

‘What are they?’ she asks

(on the old route for once),

across a valley of river, road, rail trees,

markings of a canal and a mine

long gone, the tips cleared;

new school a boast of glass and wood

 

‘Those are the gravestones of the children.’

The white arches on the hillside,

clean, bright teeth in a row,

arms of ‘dansio gwerin’ linked;

but bones will not grow

and arms won’t catch hold.

 

Waste piled for years above the school

shifted in heavy rain, warnings

the Coal Board and Council ignored;

that boy with his painting of planes,

NCB on them, dropping black bombs:

stirrings of a premonition.

 

She’s at the front, so much going on,

listening to music, playing her games,

words of her ‘llefaru’, tune of ‘alaw werin’

competing on the stage of her brain.

Ones like her, chopsy mouths and wayward hair,

speech turned to sludge on their tongues.

 

by Mike Jenkins

www.mikejenkins.net/1/post/2011/3/the-white-arches.html

 

Done