Gray Eagle's Warning

I have been with the Great Spirit and he has sent me to you in this dream.

His sadness and pain is unbearable as he sees his creation exploited and vandalised.

Look around at the riches you have been given;

The  land, the water, the air, the plants, the animals.

Everything is provided for your needs,

There is enough for all.

You were given the intelligence to use these wisely -

A brain to seek out the truth.

Knowledge that could be stored and shared -

And the ability to reach greatness.

Why are these gifts squandered?

Why are the animals exploited for greed?

And the secrets stored in plants wasted?

Why are the forests, the planet's lungs, felled for short term gain,

And why are the seas trawled dry?

You were given a soul to recognise right from wrong.

Why then have you allowed your greed to smother your soul and ruin these great gifts?

The Great Spirit has given a warning.

He does not have to destroy mankind.

In a short time, if your soul is not stirred, you will destroy yourselves.

(2003)

White Savages

Gray Eagle looked across the plain at the devastation, 

Just a mass of rotting buffalo, disgusting, decomposing flesh, 

Hordes of flies, bleached bones, as far as the end of his world.

Why did the white savages do this,

Destroying everything his people needed and taking only the skins?

These noble beasts provided everything, food, clothes, shelter,

And his people only took enough for their needs,

With a total respect for nature and the gifts of the Great Spirit.

Yet the white men kill.

They butcher, massacre and annihilate.

Do they kill for killings sake, or as an act of genocide, to wipe out the plain tribes?

Once, millions roamed freely,

But in ten short years, this world is gone.

The natives starve while the savages rape the earth.

Why do they destroy the forests;

The air we breathe;

And rip apart the holy mountains for gold?

How long will they be able to destroy the world;

And then be left with dust?

Gray Eagle, took the remnants of his once proud nation,

As the iron-clad horse puffed in the distance,

Carrying more white savages through his people's land.

Sadly he turned away, heading for the Canadian border.

(2003)

Chief Gray Eagle's address to his people - August 1850

'The Great Spirit has given us everything.
Everything you see - everything you use.
Therefore the Great Spirit is everything.
The land is sacred;
The lakes are sacred;
Even the air we breathe is sacred;
The forests, the mountains, the plains,
The rain falling from the skies;
The plants, the animals - all are sacred.
This has been our parents' land, and their parents' land,
Since the beginning of time.
We must protect and treasure it, treat it with respect,
And hand it to our children, and their children.
The Great Spirit gave us the buffalo -
It provided for all our needs,
Its flesh, its skin, its bones, gave us all we need.
It is a noble beast and we must not abuse this bequest -
But take just for our needs.
These gifts must never be exploited or destroyed,
As the white man ruins their lands.
He rapes the mountains for gold,
Destroys the crystal clear steams with filth, 
And pollutes the air above their great cities.
You must be one with the Creator,
And when you meet -
Thank him for these riches and gifts.'


(2003)

Guernica

For many years, I looked to see what mysteries it held in store,

But I was blind to what it said and the suffering it portrayed.

But then a shock shook through my brain with a screaming, vibrating inside.

Its impact opened once blind eyes to horrors caused by men.

Guernica, I found was simply a town, in the Spanish Civil War.

Fascists and Nationalists tried their best to obliterate the other side.

In this war, both justified their shocking brutal crimes, 

By quoting God was on their side and evil's being destroyed.

Nuns and priests had ears cut off - bullfighters' trophies indeed!

'We are right and they are wrong', excuses appalling deeds.

April 26 1937, the day's infamy began, 

And Blitzkreig had a trial run for future's rivers of blood.

Those 1600 died this time round and wounded littered the town, 

Millions would learn what Blitzkreig means,

When the Devil's in control.

Guernica says it all to me, 

What the future held in store.

Each time I look I feel the pain,

Of Picasso's inner wrath.

(2002)

Auschwitz

One of my childhood memories haunted me so long,

So long, so long,

I dreamt and dreamt,

Why?

I did not know.

Walking skeletons, piles of rags -

But walking rags alive?

Mounds of death - such horrible scenes,

Piled up into the sky.

So long, so long,

I wondered why,

And wished it had remained unseen.

It took so long, so very long, 

Before those earthly screams, registered the truth beyond belief,

 What happened to those poor souls.

Human spite and human hate could fester through and through, 

'So kill and kill, just kill the Jews - 

Till no-one's left alive.'

Auschwitz, 

- Still rings a bitter note, 

Of suffering in extreme.

But will they remember what man can do to humans when one hates?

Monsters did not perform those acts,

That causes us such dread,

But normal people just like you performed those deadly deeds.

Over a million died there then,

And memories often fade.

But we must not forget, 

Must never forget, 

What man can do to man!

(1990)

John Alias Smith, aged twelve, blind at birth.

I live in the dark world, bottomless and pitch-black.

No ray of sunshine penetrates my darkness.

No winking star brightens my night.

An endless night.

Green flowing waves, gently lapping the sleeping meadow are lost to my eyes;

A crimson sunset, as the warmth goes to bed and rests for the coming morn;

The crystal clear laughing stream sharing a joke with hart's tongue fern,

But failing to cheer the willow who bends and weeps;

 Green delicate coiled ferns,

Unwinding to keep time with spring, 

And the black and white wagtail conducting Nature's choir.

Yet at times, I see more than any man with eyes might see.

The gentle rippling wind that caresses my cheek on a summer's day,

The sun's smile that warms my soul,

And the delicate perfume that Nature has made for my delight.

No light enters my world, 

But still I see God.

(1963)

*John was born blind but on entering a monastery, John Smith became 'Brother John', hence the  'Alias'.

Birthday (Treorchy 1950)

A gentle haze settled over the valley.

The crowded bracken flowed in a warm summer breeze on the mountain slopes.

The chattering streams were silenced.

The trees bent and whispered secrets - shhhhhhhhhhh...

And the fritillary on heated stone fanned slowly counting time.

'Sian ....... Sian'

Working hands, pitted and scarred brushed back a tear......

'Sian'

The track clawed at the hillside, fighting for a hold,

And at the gate he paused - panting through dust-filled lungs, 

'Sian ....... my Sian'

A buzzard circled high searching for prey,

And the matching goldfinches paused, plucking thistles,

He knelt slowly by the small, ivy-covered grave.

And a hushed whisper - so quiet,

'I've remembered your birthday... Sian'.

note: Sian - pronounced 'Sharn' may be translated as Jane

(1970)

Treorchy, South Wales, UK

Stay-in strike (Fernhill Colliery September 1936)

September 1936 in Fernhill Colliery, despair hung in the air.

Angry eyes reflected in the helmet lights as rats scurried into the darkness.

They had arrived in the horses' feed and seemed well-suited to life underground.

Horses shuffled restlessly, facing their onerous task,

And reminiscing of their annual break in the bright sunshine,

Just a short freedom, from life's drudgery, in delicious fresh air.

No-one spoke.

And the dripping water echoed throughout the long, narrow tunnels.

Although everyone knew,an attack on the few was an affront to all,

Silence remained, as an  invisible wall threatening speech.

It had been a long, hard struggle as Capital would shit on Labour,

And much had been gained by acting as one.

Now a few were threatened again - only twelve denied the minimum wage,

Only a few - but past rights had been won by the shedding of blood and tears by all.

'Tommy-My-Boy' stroked the large, black V-shaped facial scar,

The black bite of a roof collapse.

He spoke in quiet Welsh tones as if gentle waves lapped the underground passages,

'When man does not stand up for principles, rights or beliefs, he's no longer a man,

And sometimes he has to die for them'.

All nodded.

None abstained.

On the pit bottom they would stay and nothing would move either way.

All sixty-four agreed, men would always have to fight in order to be free.

Cyril Rees started singing his favourite Welsh hymn,

Dick Young and William Evans followed the lead, 

And soon sixty-four voices in harmony lit the darkness,

As it vibrated along the coalface.

Men whose hardened muscles were honed in the earth's filthy bowels,

Have voices of angels that caress the soul.

But money and wealth are vicious foes,

With no holds barred in a labour war.

And 'they' controlled the air flow.

First, unbearable heat - air so foul to break one's heart.

Then air so cold - gnawing fingers of hate, freezing sweat and weakening resolve.

But time became blurred.

Here there is no day or night and tricks would not work.

They remained united and would not break.

After 292 hours in one long, so endless night,

Without fresh air or the sun's delight,

The point had been made.

So, for all concerned, a returns to the surface.

Honour was saved.

Black, haggard men emerge blinded by the unaccustomed light,

Unshaven and lousy as a result of the fight.

They had given their all to loosen the chains but knew they would be fighting again and again.

It was only a skirmish in the battle 'gainst wealth,

But in this short time they had sacrificed their health.

Now it's long past and memories fade.

Will we remember the sacrifice made?


(1972)

(sadly, TE Thomas, like many of those in this poem, died of 'black lung disease' in 1974)

(Photo depicts a typical miner reaching the surface - they were not allowed to smoke underground)

Night Shift

Underground it is always night,

As sunlight never penetrates these depths,

And helmet lights' spreading beams show the way.

There is a long walk bent double to reach the coalface,

And black scars down the miners' spines record these journeys.

Above, 'Evans-Long-Stick' travels his round lighting the streets' gas lamps;

The traffic stops;

Pubs close;

People sleep.

The darkness is welcomed as a time of rest.

It is silent and the moonlight casts slow-moving shadows along the twisting terraced streets.

Everything is quiet.

The birds roost;

Sheep sleep in their favourite recess on the mountain slope;

Even Bryn Jones' yapping black and white sheepdog,

Gently snores and twitches as it chases Joe Soap's bitch on heat.

But underground the earth is not sleeping as she groans and moans and presses on the wooden pit props;

She does not like men stealing her black gold.

At times, with frustration, she collapses the roof with an angry roar,

Or lets slowly seeping, invisible gas do its work,

Killing the plumed canary and causes a mass retreat.

At times she releases a gigantic wall of rushing water,

Through a freshly cut coalface,

And frightened miners scamper in panic away from a watery grave.

Sometimes out of spite, she explodes her breath,

Incensed at mankind plundering her wealth,

Sending a howling ball of fire straight out of hell, 

Through the narrow passages,

Incinerating all those caught in its path.

Who can forget the anguish,

As weeping wives huddle in their shawls beneath the slowly rotating wheel,

Or a mass funeral where dozens have died,

And the whole valley in black mourns.

Rhondda coal has always cost blood.

But strangely, even the earth has to sleep and rest,

From this constant battle with its robbers.

Between 2am and 4, weariness makes her rest,

And peace and silence spreads through the galleries,

Until she decides again to awake,

And continue the struggle.

(1972)