These men breathe hardbut the committee has a voice of steel.

But planted in our flesh these valleys stand,everywhere we begin to know the illness,are forced up, and our times confirm us all.

It is growing worse every day. At night"I get up to catch my breath. If I remained"flat on my back I believe I would die.

I wake up choking, and my wife"rolls me over on my left side;"then I'm asleep in the dream I always see:"the tunnel choked"the dark wall coughing dust.

The boy worked there about eighteen months,came home one evening with a shortness of breath.He said, "Mother, I cannot get my breath."Shirley was sick about three months.I would carry him from his bed to the table,from his bed to the porch. in my arms.

Between us, love the buses at the doorthe long glass street two years, my death to yoursmy death upon your lipsmy face becoming glassstrong challenged time making me win immortalthe love a mirror of our valleyour street our river a deadly glass to hold.Now they are feeding me in to a steel mill furnaceO love the stream of glass a stream of living fire.