A POEM FOR ABERFAN

When you do not live in your country, you carry it with you: sometimes you carry its rejoicing, sometimes its shame and at others its grief.

I was sixteen years old when the tragedy of Aberfan (21st October 1966) happened and sixty years on, I carry with me remembrance. I have never felt more Welsh than I do today.

Here is my tribute:

A poem for Aberfan

“How could it have happened?” we all asked that day,

“Where is God?” cried believers and doubters alike.

Oh, we knew the old argument,

“God gave man free will and it was man who put the tip there.”

But free will belonged to the powerful,

to the politicians, the lords and the bosses,

to the faces never seen in Aberfan.

It did not belong to the mothers,

screaming as they ran to the school,

or to the little ones buried in the muck

or those who lay on top of them, improvising shields.

Nor did it belong to the miners digging with bare hands

in the hope of saving children, some of them their own.

So do not quote your free will to me today,

do not quote your god to me.

Quote to me the poets of Wales,

play its music and sing the song that never dies,

the song of Aberfan.