1.Pain
of parting
Skywards thrusting still,
Black chimneys stand –
Mute monuments of pain endured
A pain not of their working
But of their passing,
When all that seemed
So strong, so sure,
So part of homeland,
In pieces lay before them.
When those who held the reins
In distant shires,
Discarded thought for fellow man
And at a stroke of pen
Destroyed a way of life
Begun by ancient man,
And where once all was life
Where smell of steam and smoke
Filled every part of earth and sky,
A silence fell,
Destructive in its power.
A price was paid …
But not by those who
Wealth and distance set apart,
And, Pilate-like,
Have washed their hands
And gone to ventures new.
But who has borne the cost?
This price that must be paid?
From humble home the ransom comes,
In human form,
As fathers wrenched from hearths held dear
Depart to lands unknown
With fear and pain of parting.
In hardship unimagined,
They toiled and sweat and cried,
To push aside adversity
And build a life,
That far from home,
Embraced and held them close
To all that they held dear.
A spirit strong as that endures
And down the ages surges
Through blood of those who follow,
And though the flesh of those
Who went with pain of parting,
Now joins, as one,
With soil of foreign field,
Their children’s children come
To bind together old and new,
To stand where stood their kin of old,
The touch again that ancient land.
So for the soul the circles closes
And comes to rest,
Its journey done.
