That Night We Prayed for Aberfan
a villanelle

by Edward Moran

[On 21 October 1966, 116 children in the town of Aberfan, Wales were suffocated when a collapsing coal slurry engulfed their schoolhouse. On August 14 2018, the Pennsylvania Attorney General released a grand jury report indicating that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of minors had been abused by 141 priests from the three dioceses in the anthracite coal regions: Allentown, Harrisburg, and Scranton.]

That night we prayed for Aberfan,
For suffocated children there,
I knelt beside old Father Don

Who set his burning coal upon
My slurring tongue in fretful prayer,
That night we prayed for Aberfan.

In stifling ash that clouded dawn,
With unclean lips I pled for air,
I knelt beside old Father Don.

His prayers, my boyish prayers called on
The Lord of Torrents in despair
That night we prayed for Aberfan. 

I choked on my eleison
For broken boys, all whelmed and bare
I knelt beside old Father Don. 

Who from his millstone prayed upon
Our sunken limbs entangled there
That night we prayed for Aberfan
I knelt beside old Father Don.

Born in Wilkes-Barre, Edward Moran grew up in a working-class family and graduated from the former St Leo’s High School in Ashley.

Also by Edward Moran: 
How I Escaped the Soviet Invasion in '68
On Suffocation 
Coal and Its Discontents 
A Child’s Christmas in Coaldamp