THE FIRST
They regarded that place as their own. That place, which would not have been but for the blind horses and the lads and the machines underground. The hills that would not have risen up were it not for the mining industry, which in the old days became the obsession of this land. Cages on cables were pulled up to the towers, trolleys. The iron pouches tilted out coal to the left, and slate-rubbish to the right. Coal went to the furnaces and the refuse to the culm banks near the shafts. What diminished down below accumulated up top. The culm banks grew and nobody gave them a second thought. Even if they resembled pyramids, they were not raised as monuments to anyone. They signified nothing. They were not heaped up so as to reach the stars or the gods; they simply remain, enduring, o
