And when retirement came, after fifty years down the mine,
Man and boy, man and boy, boyhood turned too soon into the man
As he had seen things that no teenage child should see, alas,
All there remained was husk, a shell, a dust-dry chrysalis
From which the butterfly had failed to hatch full formed.
The rasping lungs, foul phlegm and hacking cough affirmed
How he had been all rendered dry by the overpowering pit:
Sucked dry by hot foetid underground air, playing its part
In the role of that precursor of a hell in an unwritten book;
Sucked dry by the constant ache of arm and thigh and back
That strove all those long years to hew the bright-black stone;
Sucked dry by memory of lost pals and relatives, that stain
Where rock fall or grim gas had murdered senselessly his kith and kin;
Sucked dry by other losses too, as time, for reasons quite beyond his ken
Where once fine fresh-faced lads encountered time that marched
Double-paced, to the graveyard, all ragged and besmirched.
But still upon his face there shone a pride, and not the shine
Of black-diamond anthracite, the customary ingrained sheen
That could not be removed (what irony) , by even coal-tar soap
Nor even gleam of gold reflecting that of the proffered sop
To his long-service, a cheap watch, that his masters at the mine
Demeaned themselves to give to him. But still the inner man
Revealed a glow of some sense of self-accomplishment and grit
Where he had played his bit-part role in making Britain great
And, in that moment, there was perhaps unleashed another angle -
A glimpse of iridescent scaly wings, not butterfly but angel.

C Richard Miles

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-old-miner/