Men sold their souls to the mines
Gave their lives for a dollar that
Went into someone elses pocket
Some are still in those pits deep
Beneath the ground; buried there
Instead of their ancestral lands
Wives without husbands; children
Hungry and without understanding

Sometimes men go beneath the dirt
Alive, and never come out again
Worse still, some came out only to
Succumb to a fate nobody knew of
At least not at first, not right away
Then to a fate that was known by
Those who owned those mines; 
Whose greed knew no boundaries
Black lung was only a consequence
That the poor were left to burden