Potosi Miners

Crouched and crooked, struggling for breath.
Going down fast, further out of my depth.
"Into the mouth of hell", one chronicler put,
Under the mountain at twelve thousand foot.
Fumbling through the catacombs,
Dust encrusted nostrils cave in,
Claustrophobia threatening.
Ghosts in the rock,
The forgotten of the flock.
Unseen, underground,
Turned to stone through centuries without sound.

Choking, scrambling on all fours,
Palms cut on jagged debris.
Pause to heave air in,
A tenth of my strength.
Up again, under helmet and overhanging crunch,
Potosi miners, hard hattest of the bunch.
Pulling minerals from the mountain,
Dragging them up and out on defiant spines, through impossile passages.
Pushing the wagon: two by two, a ton along rusting rails,
Plunging coca into their mouths, all day with blackened nails.
The leaf their only alimentation,
The green teethed symbol of this vocation.

Dense heat, stooping torchlight and broken beams,
Distant chisels pick at the seams.
Silver, Zinc, Copper, Tin.
The periodically able, where do I fit in?
Square shouldered great grandad in the ground for coal,
Saviour hero when the pit fell in.
Great man they say, but neither I nor my father's him,
Potosi miners doing themselve in.
Living forty, fifty years,
The lungs pack up and succumb to the tears,
Of wives, mothers, sons and daughters,
The numbers stack up, the sum of their fears.

Inheritance, conscious inevitability:
The miner's son joins the fraternity,
Wears its gowns but seldom frowns,
Earns more than they do in the towns.
Answers to noone, commitment to collectivity,
A creed of positivity, a law of reciprocity.
Empowered, the cooperative sets its own hours,
Selects its holidays and shares what it pays.
The living mine's memory,
It wasn't always like this:
Forced labour, six months without daylight,
Now death has a sweeter kiss.
Families round the table, dining on meat and rice,
Potosi miners, brothers in proud sacrifice.