Matewan

(after the film by John Sayles)

“Welcome to Matewan. This here’s

a company town, and the company

is your benefactor and your god,

your pious mother and stern father.

Boys, think of yourselves as tools,

implements for the extraction of coal.

“We pay ninety cents per ton of coal,

but listen up: your train ride here,

your housing and clothing and tools –

them’s a debt you owe the company:

honour it like you honour your father,

pay it from your first wages, by God!

“There’s a meeting house for God

and prayer. But hear me, boys: coal’s

your cathedral, coal’s Your Father

who art in the mine, ninety cents, here

in the darkness as it is in the company,

ours is the profit and thou art the tools.”

You son of a bitch! Men ain’t tools,

doesn’t matter if they’re lost to God

or chosen to sit in His company

come the day this dark pit of coal

and all the corruption that’s here

on earth is the fuel for Our Father’s

prophecy: the last shall be first. Father,

deliver us. That, or give us the tools

to do the job ourselves: now, here,

in the face of men whose only god

is the ledger book written in coal-

black ink and tallied by the company

accountant. Deliver us from company

enforcers with clubs and guns. Father,

deliver us from the price of coal.

Or shelve forgiveness, give us the tools

and look away. In some places God

and man work differently. Like here,

in this company town. Down tools.

stand with father and brother. God’s

absent where coal is. In Matewan. Here. 

(This sestina was inspired by John Sayles's film. The stanzas in quotation marks are not verbatim from the movie, but my re-imagining of the voice of the company man who, in an early scene, "welcomes" a new workforce to Matewan and informs them in no uncertain terms that they're pretty much owned by the company.)