70
PARTISAN REVIEW
Them the Co. evicted have no windows, or flowerpots to put
in them.
That one day a week my man finds work in the pits is like one
leg-
who can stand on it long?"
2.
THE MINE
Gleam on forehead, working the staggered day in the earth's
absolute evening, in the hot places or <;>ver the knee in icy rush,
cracking black from black while the battery jolts on the buttock.
Skinny rats attend at lunch, and-"Look't that big one!"-
writhing in a faint I
The child's scream, the rescuers masked, class-solid, the folk
watching into the earth. The young thigh of whose love
burns meanwhile in a splitting tunnel? What father drowns
in stone?
"The air-pump had T.B."? For whom, hoistable from deep
grave, prepare a shallower?
Just at lunch the life-thirsty carbon monoxide coughed,
from the bad pockets left unbricked by the new dividend,
into a hundred miners' mouths, forever open.
About those busy with flame, succor, hand to eardrum,
rock folded rock.
Outside in the 9ld sunlight each woman watcher gripped
the concentration of her vacant hands, the desolate summer;
food and hope dear; terror outliving prayer; at last
in the tipple yard these stretchers parallel, where smiles
horror, the acrobat.
"God's devastation," calmly God's minister in pure collar
among the uncomfortable dirty tombs, sanctions 63 dead,
"God's hand and compensation. Moved like David in its heart,
our Co. sends green wreaths to each and
$2
5
scrip.
God's will be done."
Men, 0 drillers, plowers, workers of the actual ground, we,
our will be done I Our picks must pierce in Washington
the plaster falsehoods. Miners' local, farmers' league
