The Lost Children of Aberfan, Wales

 The Lost Children of Aberfan, Wales

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The children of Aberfan Wales
I hear your cries
October 21, 1966
Rain endlessly falls
Coal mining town
Families and loved ones to be separated
Sleep and dream not knowing
The horror to come
The coal tip hangs by threads over Aberfan

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We fragrant ants have gone to our bed
blankets of moss pulled over our heads
Sweet silence rhythm of the earth
Her sweet loamy perfume
Sending great ant mind collective
Into the Dreaming
The children reside in dreams
Can you hear their cries?

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A formal report:
Please let us be safe
We sing for future generations
Please let them live

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A wave breaks from the coal tip
The avalanche descends
Rolling sound of thunder
The town caught unaware.

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The avalanche takes out cottages
Its mission of death picks up speed
Pantaglass General School
Not long after 9:15 AM
Teachers are taking attendance
Collecting lunch money
It was the day before break
Children happy school would end at noon

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The avalanche hits the next generation
A tidal wave of sludge and slurry hit the school
A tide of mortality 30 feet high
Mud rivers violently snake
Down hallways
Filling young lungs
Children suffocate
They can not even scream
The structure of the school
Gives way
Falling debris
Teachers brave
Cover children
With their bodies
As death crushes life
The school meal clerk saves five children
Her body is a shield
She dies still holding a pound note
Just collected for school meals
A headmaster tries saving a class
He uses a blackboard and fails
He and all 34 children in class
Crushed, mangled, and dead.

***

Suddenly the avalanche of death ceases
A great silence envelops the town
109 children between 7 and 10 dead
Five brave teachers
Breath their final breath
Dead
Rising to heaven
The parents and minors full of despair
Remove rubble with their hands
One dead child after another
Mothers hold their mangled dead children
Screaming in horror
A lost generation

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As mounds of the bodies lost rise
The Sun bathes the lost generation in light

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All around this world
Children eat crumbs to survive
No one notices their deaths
Every day more die
As the West watches television

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An unexploded bomb from World War Two
Is discovered in another land
By children
It is safely defused

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Can you hear the Nazi bombs
rain down endlessly?
It was not long ago
Little more than 30 years ago, from 1966
London and the cities across the land
Rubble and debris
The British, Welsh, and Scotts never gave up
To the death, they would fight
Can you hear Churchill on the radio?
His strength and fearlessness
Rally the people
To do the impossible

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In this illusory dream
We clean up appearances
Back in bed soon after dark
Oh what joy
Children
Awake, alive, with a lost innocent wisdom
Are we willing to learn from such small bodies?
Can we hear their song?
Their sonar sonatas?
Full of hope
The old has grown brittle
Breaking from the past
We awake
Remembering the lost generation
The children are gone
What future is left to live for?

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At least
We hope and pray
The giants of death will stop
Watch
Listen
Breathe
Learn
Be kind
To the earth's children
The children suffer greatly
While we plunder their future
The giants cannot defeat our love.

***

Long ago, a young man of 24
Set off for Aberfan
In the year of 1989
He wanted to meet the children born after 1966
He wanted to feel the horror
He wanted to feel the renewal
He wanted to look in the eyes
The generation of children
Born after this horror

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Wandering the empty streets of Aberfan
Three children emerged with a ball
We played in innocence
The youngest said many died long ago
Half his relatives
The others spoke of the ghosts
Who they never met
Despite the horror
In their eyes.
I see innocence and strength.

***

We bury the dead and say goodbye
To what could have been
The illusory dream of life goes on
Some wounds never heal
Our wounds can help others
Face the horror
Knowing at dawn
Life is renewed

***

The bulb in spring pushes through the rubble
It blossoms
A mother who lost everything
Her husband, who breathed
Black dust in the coal mines
Her parents gone
In one of the first houses taken by death
Her four dead children in that school
She has felt dead ever since that day in 1966
She looks at the rubble
Something slowly emerges
The flower blooms
For the first time, she smiles
She gets on with living
The choice is life or death
She chooses life
Others will be born
She will never have children again
She goes to the park every day
Watching the children play
Without words, she recognizes
Despite death
All will be ok

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The young man in the picture with the children of Aberfan left, setting off into the unknown he called home. He lived so many lives he forgot his name. The story of his life has been lost to time. He was said to wish to be anonymous, so his history is unknown.

He will be forgotten with the passing of time. 

The children of Aberfan, Wales will never be forgotten.

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Before the young man left Aberfan, he saw the children wave at him. He waved back. They now live in his heart. He has never forgotten these children or the generation lost in Aberfan, two months after he was born in 1966.

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David Penn Trinley Arndt wrote the poem in Wales in August 1989. It was edited and revised on May 5th, 2022.

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The picture may be of the author with the boys he met and played with in Aberfan, Wales in August, 1989.

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© David Penn Trinley Arndt 2022