Dochter van de mijnen

This poem is in memory of my auntie Margaret Nagelkerke-Hooper who died in November 2016. She was born in Clay Cross, moved to the Netherlands in 1963 and lived there until she died.

Daughter of the mines
In childhood you played here
Your family steeped in coal
You tasted the dust in the air
Saw the men blackened from work
Their weary post-shift mile
Almost at an end

Smoke of chimney, train, tobacco
clouding the air;
insidious, covering, seeping
into every nook and crack
The nemesis of the wives
their daily battle joined
and most often won but
they knew the war raged on

This was not for you
Not for the star that gleamed
so bright in the greyness
No Long Rows for
the Coronation Queen
who had so much more
to give; so much more to see

In a land so foreign
from the green hills and grimy town
where a new language was no barrier
and a new career mastered
among the windmills and tulips

Long after the soot-stained rows
had turned to dust
not even ghosts of pitmen
walk the streets
Your roots were never torn
but held firm beneath two plots

Dochter van de mijnen
Je hart geraakt door twee landen
Je hield van het eerste;
in het tweede vond je

liefde en vrijheid

Daughter of the mines
In your heart you have two lands
You loved the first;
In the second
you found love and freedom

(c) Tim Fellows 2017