Alan Uchaf
by Beryl Richards
The sun leapt over the hills Spilling with incandescent frenzy Light warmth and colour into narrow cottage corners Cocks crowed, cows were milked, Farms hollered into life, Housemaids, labourers and farmers awoke to another tranquil valley dawn The virgin beauty of the hills, redolent with the scents of summer suddenly were invaded With pick, hammer and Man Surveying the idyllic hills, searching for the fuel of war, and of industry, The Black Diamonds of Coal. The dreamtime was over! The jet gold of steam and industry And the lust for power had reached the virgin valley The prospectors for the jet diamonds came from afar Scarring the landscape with the blackness of their pits and their greed The strangers who came from East, North South and West Were the poor! In search of a star to placate poverty and oppression. Innovators, entrepreneurs came too, Who wished possession of the land, and of the people who worked it, To feed power lust of the iron trade. The virgin valley became blackened and scarred with human And industrial wreckage Tides of humanity, hewing the coal in the black hell slaved to make others rich! Men, women and children too, formed the human carnage With blood, sinew and tears Exploited, used, still they worked Singing, Rebelling, Praying, that their nightmare would be answered By some God in his benevolence He never came, only the malevolence of the owners, Inebriated in their corrupt human profit. Still they came, in waves, fodder for the mines The Henges and ancient places, A culture long forgotten in the lust for the black power of coal, Screamed silently at the ransom paid by so many for so little.
Afan Uchaf Two - Passion
We were young, we were wild In those fern-filled days of summer and ecstasy. You were the man and, the child The passion-filled hills our domain of love are now lost, forever with my youth and my reverie. The autumn of my days reflect my summer In colours of russet and gold My eyes grow dim - My speech dimmer But, the colours remembered And the wild innocence of that summer will never grow old.
Afan Uchaf Three - The Moon.
The moon shone, luminous on white Gleaming slates on slanted roofs In her beauty, fragile, finite. She sat through the solitary night. Soul search for the proof. In her beauty, fragile, finite. Was it wrong on was it right? To love him was her reproof The moon shone, luminous on white. Her sorrow at her plight He, now distant and aloof, In her beauty, fragile, finite The beauty of her love was in his sight Rejected, spurned and in counterproof The moon shone, luminous on white. Her dark secret she held so tight To the moon she told the truth, The moon shone luminous on white In her beauty fragile, and finite.
Afan Uchaf Four - The Blackness
The desolate, Black fault of coal deprived her of his love Crashing and grinding bone from above Sombrely alone, solitary in his Black sheole Away from her in the lonely darkness of that hell hole. Giving no rest or respite for his truelove Trapped and dead in that blackdamp manhole. The colour and brightness of their days Sped away in breathless passion Became blurred now in helpless haze Out of her grief, and the life to be She must now fashion A way out of this nightmare maze For his battered spirit to fly free.
by Beryl Richards
Hazy sun rises on cloud lapped, fir capped hills Mist hangs in fern filled, foxgloved hollows, Damp dingles, flecked with sparkling dewed droplets, Seep to the river which snakes over stones on the valley floor Birdsong fills the air, fragrant with the scents of summer Green fernwaves windscatter steep hillsides, The valley leaps to life Small animals crowd and creep hedgerows Sleepy hamlets awake to the dawn of another day The distant hum of traffic on winding roads Brings the world to the wild valley.
by Beryl Richards
Our country, populated with spirits
Who scream silently in rage
At the shape of the altered hills and henges
No more the black mills and winding wheels
It is now politically correct
To skim and scrape OUR wealth away
Carting the coal to create the wealth of the south
No more the miners inging and hacking
Only the mechanical monsters
Ransacking our heritage - WALES