Not for the hard, life-denying graft of it
or the danger, not for the polluting smoke
or the banishing of bird song,
not for the exploitation and social
upheaval, least of all for its cannons
at Naseby, Bunker Hill, Waterloo,
but for its madness, the sheer reach of it,
the invention of it, the ambition,
the defiance, the rhythmical creak
of the horse-drawn gin pumping water
from the river, the sulphurous roars
of the furnace, the forge hammers pounding
through the ancient woods, along Offa’s Dyke,
their echoes dying…
By David Selzer