keen photo of Billy Joel.

'It's no fun being old, when the nights are cold
and the bees in the hive no longer sing.
It's no fun being old, when the nights are rolled
in a bottle of ale and a coal-face wind.
When time began, there were fashions to try,
but, underground, life's pit denies;
as night follows day, the miner's eye
is all that gleams as the black hill's spy.
It's no fun being old: recollections of young men
snarl around the slack as old age rends.
It's no fun being old: recollections of young men
snarl and snap the back as coal-seams end.
I do not want what I have not got:
soot-black to my bones, I do not want a thing.
I do not want what I have not got:
soot-black to the bones, life's drifting dins.
And I remember Charlie and I remember Baker,
remember all those lads who dug down every acre;
and I remember Charlie and I remember Baker,
remember all those kids whose coal-faced splendour
banged in the lungs and choked the ears and eyes
and carried the cross of the pit-lights in the skies
and banged in the lungs and choked the land with tears
and carried the cross to weekends on the pier.
Come, let me tell you the story of my doings.
Come, let me tell you the story of my days.
Beginning down the mine, I dug the underspines
of every underworld to have puffed up from the clays.
The bottle is dead by seven and the sun
a soot-black rattle, cackles like a gun -
and when I was twelve I went beneath the world
to dig for fifty years in a coal-face for the pearls
of industry, factory, fireside and scuttle,
suffering as I dig like a mouse drowned in a puddle,
suffering like a sentry of dark and daft demesnes,
suffering like a soldier with a severed arm for dreams.
It's no fun being old when the buddy in the cage
has keeled a million times and the pithead's glassy rage
has grassed over millions of villages of lives
and the kettle turned black has made a tea of knives
and the sickle in the sun has carved away the moon
and the hammer in the drum has beat away the womb
and the manacled maidens I wished upon when young
have smoked into a grave of still-born thrum.
We did not come to dig for all our days.
We did not come to dig for all our ways.
But dig we had to do with our days behind our back
and the sun and moon as blackened as a cat.
It's no fun being old when the bees don't sing
and the world outside the windows has broken in the wind
and the pit-side's master has masked away the mind
in the penniless pockets of the pit-men doing time.
It's no fun being furled in flat old age
when the workhouse doors have opened like a wave
and the memories of good times are dreams with foolish ends
and the memories of bad times are as dear as missing friends.
It's no fun, and this I'm telling you:
coal-face crucifixion is all we ever knew.
It's no fun, and this I'm saying right:
coal-face crucifixion is the cancer in our pipes.
And I remember Charlie and I remember Baker,
remember all the lads who lit the black touch-paper
and sent their infant firework smearing into flames
and never knew just how the pit-face in the rain
could only come to burn away their prides
and leave them eighty-plus in a damning of their tides
and suck away laughter and char away their souls
and graft their childhood days to a cradle full of coals
This is the coal-face all of us are born to.
This is the coal-face each of us is wed to.
This is the underground chamber in the mind
that never learns enough to rise above the time.
Black in the blackness, black as burning trees,
black as Aberfan and the death of infancy,
black as the angels who lit this fag-ash way,
black we grow older and black we must decay.
Black as black, black as black death,
black as coke that fumes beneath the breath;
black as black, black as blackdeath rats,
black is our sun and black is heaven's back.
Born underground and dying in the dark,
digging is the darkness that plunders all our hearts,
and digging now we lie, our hearts and minds soot-heavy,
digging shallow graves in the twilight of the century.
Digging we lie, our hearts and minds resigned
to a certainty of heaven that stifles as it binds;
what we had, never had, and now shall never own
slumbering behind us; a pick-axe to our bones.'

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copyright jedbellamy, 1999.