Songwriter, guitarist and composer

Little Blinder (for Barry Hines)

This is a song commissioned by the campaign to install a statue in Barnsley town centre in honour of local teacher, writer and activist Barry Hines, author of 'A Kestrel For a Knave' (which became the 1969 film ‘Kes’) and 'Threads'.

Pushing iron underground through sunken landscapes and nights that never end

His pick a ticking clock, another seam's worth of words is buried with him

every time that he descends

A voice on his shoulder, insistently repeating what he knows

Sowing seeds bearing seeds of promise where it laboured once to grow

Pulling hearts and minds neglected from the coal face to the clarity of day

Little Blinder, those in shadow will find in you the lamp

they'd stopped believing might ever show their way.

Sharpened eyes and toughened hands dissect pride and deprivation

and from them build a stage on which will play

tales of rogues, of redemption, of the people's armageddon,

of those told to get out of the way.

A scream on his conscience insistently drowns out the siren's call;

that noise in every throat the morning after the night the fires fall.

Casting onto streets we know a ragged future with no hope to mend the fault

Little Blinder, those in terror will find in you the thread

we disregarded in favour of assault.

Dragging hope and aspiration from the goal mouth to a gamble on the throw

Little Blinder, those not chosen will find in you the nerve

the class decided was never theirs to show.

Billy now may rest, no longer fearful of the depth to which he'll fall

and the noise of all those others, of his teachers and his brother

is lost beneath that noble falcon's call.

Written by Del Scott Miller