This poem journeys through industrial history into present decay. Once a line of coal, iron, smoke, and muscle, the Penrhos Branch Line is now reclaimed by brambles, ash, hazel, and silence. Bowman contrasts the grit of navvy labor with today’s natural quiet -- woodlice, willowherb, woodpeckers. The poem honors both the human effort that built it and the patient reclamation of nature, showing how history dissolves into landscape, leaving memory in the rustle of weeds and the drone of insects.
The cold facts are these:
It was built for coal, for iron,
from Tynycaeau Junction, North East
through Rhydlafer to the Garth Mountain,
for the dolomite quarry,
through Pentyrch Cutting and
Walnut Tree Tunnel,
jutting high brick viaduct
across the Taff to Penrhos,
for ships at Barry Dock,
for steam, for smoke,
for ash,
for money.
It is a stretch of muscle,
navvy strength in broken boots,
for shelter, for heat, for food,
effort in spades, slab sided
and cold cast, rivet and rail,
ballast and sleeper,
for piston, for steel, for shovel,
for the clatter of metal
and the steam whistle’s wail.
But now nettles blow
in this beautiful decay,
buttressed by a ragbag of brambles.
It is home for Ash,
for Hazel,
for silence
that puddles
in the trees’ shade.
In this short pause in eternity
we walk the exposed belly,
follow its grain to the end,
and back again, to the tunnel mouth
muzzled with moss.
The ballast is tombed in leaves,
a womb for woodlice, for ground beetles,
for Rosebay Willowherb, for Ragwort.
There is no history here.
We see only to the bend clotted with weeds,
but hear fat insects drone, thick as resin,
and the sudden rattle of a woodpecker
hollowing a nest.
Nick Bowman