Vincent Van Gogh 20 - Deep Down In The Mines Poem by Geeta Radhakrishna Menon

When we look at the paintings of Van Gogh.
We see the pain, suffering on the face of people,
The hopeless life of struggle and slavery,
A life without sunshine or any joy -
Just darkness, drudgery and dread!

Vincent spent his time, each day, each hour,
With the miners and for the miners,
Listening to them, tending to their needs,
Reading from the bible, preaching to them.
He went down the mine named Marcasse,
Seven hundred metres deep, spent over six hours,
To explore, and to watch the miners slogging.
They looked like chimney sweeps, the whites of their eyes glaring.
Only Vincent could have captured this expression in his paintings!

He watched the miners working in low, narrow passages,
Rows of dark cells, in the hidden corners of the underworld.
The miners wore tattered, coarse linen suit, black and filthy,
In the dingy, limited area, where there was no space to stand.
They had to bend, lie down to work, twist their bodies,
In an atmosphere, similar to dark, gloomy prison cells.
Marcasse, was one of a string of seven mines, a dangerous pit,
Where many had perished, either ascending or descending,
Due to poisonous gas, explosion, flooding or collapse of tunnels.

When Vincent returned from the trip to the mines,
He was overcome with fatigue, but he could not forget
The blackened, miserable faces of the miners, or
The melancholic condition of their lives. Vincent wrote
To his brother Theo: 'The villages here look desolate, dead
And forsaken, because life is going on underground
instead of above. One might live here for years,
But if one had not been down in the mines,
One would not have a just idea of the real state of things.'

Vincent's sketches are reflections of stark reality,
Of life and its myriad deprivations and disappointments.
When he sketched and painted the miners,
We witnessed the greys, browns and black holes of earth,
And the dangerous expeditions of the brave miners into the black pit!

A Biographical Poem