Dateline 10.16.2022: We were immensely saddened this week, to read of these coal miners — 41 in all — snuffed out in an explosion on the other side of the globe.

And, as my months, years and decades’ of night-times inexorably catch up with me… I now sometimes awaken (at about 3:45 am), stirring and sweating — from dreams I still have — of a battered steel cage, partly spatter-painted yellow, falling at great speed — over a mile down, into the hard dark mountain’s underbelly, with perhaps a billion tons of rock then waiting overhead — waiting, silently — to kill the unguarded…

At those times, I soothe myself with this poem from WWI’s end, at right and below. It speaks truth of those lost when I was underground — and of those 41 lost, just this week — in Northern Turkey. Do travel well my brothers — but do travel… light.

“. . .When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale marching hoards go….
Say not soft things as other men have said… and should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore…
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore….”

Here is the story from Amasra, Turkey — another coal fed tragedy, for all these families and friends — of the faceless dead:

…An explosion inside a coal mine in northern Turkey killed at least 41 people, the Turkish president has said, as rescue operations were concluded….

The blast occurred on Friday at the state-owned TTK Amasra Muessese Mudurlugu mine in the town of Amasra, in the Black Sea coastal province of Bartin….

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu earlier said 58 miners had survived the blast, “either by themselves or thanks to rescuers”.

He said 28 people had been injured as a result of the blast….

So nearly 40 per cent of all the miners there were taken… nearly instantly, in a flashover fire. Unfathomable.

नमस्ते