Aberfan

As Steven Erlanger wrote:

At the school assembly that day, they sang “All Things Bright and Beautiful” and were about to start classes when they heard a roar in the distance.

Fifty years ago, after days of hard rain, a mountain of coal waste and slurry slid through Aberfan in a black avalanche, crushing the town’s school in its path and killing 28 adults and 116 children.

At the inquest, when a child’s cause of death was listed as asphyxia and multiple injuries, one father famously said: “No, sir. Buried alive by the National Coal Board. That is what I want to see on the record.”

This poem is my commemoration of that disaster.

I've chosen a rondel as the form of the poem, with an open meter.

Aberfan


Fifty years past, the village died
Her heart cut out, her soul so lost
The slag heap fell, at such a cost
Rain came down, the people cried

With bare hands, oh how they tried
To dig for children, men exhaust
Fifty years past, the village died
Her heart cut out, her soul so lost

Slag came down in deathly slide
The school buried, oh such a cost
Weep for children that were lost
On that hillside, how they cried
Fifty years past, the village died