We were not here very long, those four decades and more ago, when the coal tip in Wales gave way and slid down on the school, burying its children. In the college jottings one of our number began his short poem Aberfan, abair paidir, modulating the sounds of the village name into the sounds of the heart, and nursing the elsewhere tragedy with the immediacy of absorption.
Today – looking back over those years – and at times maybe we can’t or shouldn’t – we know we have woven words into other people’s lives, and perhaps our own too – to comfort pain, to give hope, to raise a smile, to unlock the space where a soul may float in freedom, content.