Aberfan : Under
the Arc Lights
Ask what was normal in green nature and its pain: Will rain undermine our homes and us again?
Ask those scrabbling garden-breakers, the mountain sheep Where are the classroom's children?—and then weep.
0 martyred town shorn 6f its crown of glory!
That dumpy matriarch scanning in our fury For faces of first-borns in the two handed- bier;
All the elements of tragedy, are here.
Waters of history still in midnight's deep Drip in Ceridwen's cauldrons; rage eistedd- fod, seep Into the jagged stalactites of hearts' hours. Crushed out of life like paper-petalled flowers.
Ask courting couples whose coats took dust off the tips; And hand back to the heavens stars on the future lips; Children conceived in mist whose play- ground it had made.
Blame breeds guilt with blind anger in its road.
The whole bare drama played . out as it looms To a world-shared audience in their evening room; One human chain of rescue under arc-light glare.
All the elements of tragedy are here.
KEIDRYCH. RHYS
• '6,
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