Dowlais Top by Ewart Richards

Above Dowlais Top the night sky glows
a brilliant orange as furnaces pour forth
molten metal.

Sweating men with straining muscles
pour the spitting liquid into casts and dies
to solidify into a multitude
of shapes and sizes.

From rolling mills, truckloads of rails,
Girders and iron bars join the lines of
Coal trucks on their way down the valley
To Cardiff’s burgeoning docks.

With their crews paid off to sample
Butetown’s hospitality, empty
ships wait to load the riches from the
Taff and Rhondda valleys.

In the new imposing coal exchange
ship and mine owners wheel and deal
to transport coal, iron and steel.

Fortunes are made and lost.

At the dock gate, penniless seamen,
Some with stitches, black eyes and
Broken noses, queue to join the ships.

Wealth and destination go hand in hand.