Lead on the Moor

Cinnabar the sun in the western sky

as wild heather moors dark and brooding

act almost, but not quite, malign of spirit.  

Mist in the valley creeps like mustard gas

its yellow hue recreating a memory from Passchendaele, 

beasts in the field engulfed as dumbly they stand.

But this is no battlefield, no razor barbed wire here 

no dank foetid foxhole scratched in shell scared earth,

only lichen encrusted dry stone walls and the derelict, 

pay homage here to endeavours long since past.

Written into history by chronicles with silver halide chemistry 

forged through the smooth myopic glass of a historical lens

Stories of men who scratched with iron tools and calloused hand

scared their mark on England’s not so green and pleasant lands

Laboured and died to feed kith and kin

Lǣdan was king here and miners his pawns 

In the dark damp mines they toiled their days

hacking through Neptunian dykes for a Galena prize 

As maggots feasting upon rotting flesh 

dreams one day they may metaphorise, into at best a fly. 

People merely existed here, what they had could barely be called life.

Not for them three score and ten but forty wet summers and a white plague end. 

Families, five to a room as the North Pennine winter gnawed like cancer into their bones

lying upon ramshackle wooden bed, huddled like sheep to keep warm.

Childhood long gone by the age of eight, old age set in by the age twenty one.

All to feed the ravenous furnace to the East, for empire ships to distant lands sail

Three generations cut as chaff in fields of wheat, barely a hundred years between. 

Remember well as you watch that vermilion sun set, as the furnace flames die slowly to the east 

Remember those days of old when we are told values were

more treasured, more sacred, more real

Remember the secret of these dark moors, the lives and suffering of so many, 

gave riches, wealth and privilege to the lives of so few.