What hell would have raged 

within these stone walls?

How was this alchemy wrought?

What violence of pressure?

What heat and force

applied with what brutish intent?

To take what was once solid and true

and bend it to a Master's will?

​

I speak not of iron nor steel nor rock,

for they are but elemental forms;

but of matter more precious,

yet valued so cheap -

the soul of the working man.

​

Buckled and contorted,

poisoned and burned;

gripped in the capitalist fist.

Enslaved by the owners

for the enrichment of few,

and trapped in a snare of toil.

​

Slumped against the hill 

like a decomposing corpse;

this place keeps its counsel.

Its chimneys, toppled,

its furnaces, fallen.

As broken as the lives it held.

​

But never forget, in this quiet vale,

that their price is yet to be paid.

From where wild flowers bloom 

and where grasses grow free,

blood once soaked the soil

into which the lives of men were trod.