For it is brought home to you, at least
while you are watching, that it is only
because miners sweat their guts out that
superior persons can remain superior.
You and I and the editor of the Times
Literary Sup., and the Nancy poets
and the Archbishop of Canterbury
and Comerade X, author of Marxism
for Infants–all of us really owe the
comparative decency of our lives
to poor drudges underground, blackened
to the eyes, with their throats full
of coal dust, driving their shovels forward
with arms and belly muscles of steel.
From George Orwell’s ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937) as cited on Fors Clavigera. By Marika Rose.
Verbatim Poetry 