A Welsh Coal Mines web page

PENNSYLVANIA ANTHRACITE



Tyrannosaur colliery no longer screams, shrieks, and shudders.

Subterranean labyrinths untended in Stygian darkness.

The living had penetrated the dead's domain in these catacombs.

Fathers and sons dug their own ebony mausoleum as they labored

	far below family, parish, market place, and village green.
	
	

Cathedral cairns of gray slag desecrate and consecrate this

	pocked site of sacrifice to a profane abandoned god.

Mules blinded by relentless underground darkness, Coal and Iron Police, the
Lattimer Massacre, National Guard strike breakers, and prepubescent breaker boys
	are now history and our legacy.

Black hands, black lungs, black widows remain bringing flowers to

	tombstones bearing strange names that seem to possess no vowels.

Wendell Michael Kurylowicz (Laramie, Wyoming)