Bent over in the darkness
The slow chipping against the face
Ears ever alert to the sound of cracking
The terrible groan before the fall.

Remember us, those who in the sunlight walk and swim and fly,
While beneath your feet, we sweat and toil and die.

No day nor night against the rock
Friendship grows as some nocturnal flower
The shared boredom, shared danger
Brings together brothers not of blood.

Remember us, those who in the sunlight walk and swim and fly,
While beneath your feet, we sweat and toil and die.

Hands worn and cracked, throat ravaged and wracked
The dust of our work seeps into pores
Seeps into noses and into mouths
Stifling breath, eating away, an inorganic predator.

Remember us, those who in the sunlight walk and swim and fly,
While beneath your feet, we sweat and toil and die.

The four elements are our bane
The earth that crushes, the bad air that suffocates
The fire that flashes from a wayward spark
The water that seeps and becomes a flood.

Remember us, those who in the sunlight walk and swim and fly,
While beneath your feet, we sweat and toil and die.

And at the entrance, stand the women clutching bairns
Faces lined by labour, old before their years
The children cry for food and for a father, for a brother
Whose shattered bodies lie beneath.

Remember us, those who in the sunlight walk and swim and fly
And remember those we have left behind - doomed to starve and die.


Penned by my hand on the 12th of Phaestian, in the year 391 AF.