Through the window and as still as a fist

pulled and held in abeyance, the old pithead

is an ink drawing beside her framed print

of Klimt’s The Kiss and above

that photo of the survivors he’d dragged

from the roof fall, the matchstick props.

 

No-one mentioned what lay behind

the icon, the history of shared martyrdom:

that bitch whimpering in the outhouse; his wife

outsmarting her bruised cheek with mascara.

 

Did you see it? Did you hear it?

 

The pit had bled its silence into the room,

and in that instant, we saw it; we heard it:

her tremor; the thunder of tinkling crockery.

 

Note: Cymmer is a Welsh mining village

Nigel Jarrett has published two collections of poetry: Miners at the Quarry Pool and Gwyriad. The first was described by Agenda magazine as ‘a virtuoso performance’ and the latter by Acumen magazine as ‘an engrossing window on to family relationships…but also ranging farther afield with perceptive meditations on many of the key moments in human existence expressed with humour and insight’. He has also published four collections of stories, a novel, and a fictional memoir. Jarrett is a former daily-newspaperman. He is a winner of the Rhys Davies prize and the inaugural Templar Shorts prize, both for short fiction. He lives in Abergavenny.