A date fifty years ago surfaces
as I watch the rolling news
in the days after Grenfell  
and somebody screams Bastards! off-camera.

We had been asked to bring
a sixpence, a shilling, a florin,
when they held the special assembly
for Aberfan.

                    My father shouted
the Coal Board were criminals, murderers;
raged again when they looted the Fund.
I should not connect the two, but I do:

the school drowned in slurry
on the small black-and-white screen;
the tower in flames on full-colour plasma.
The constant, dutiful Queen.