"And still go down. Now ladder-mouth; and the precipitous fear, uncertain rungs down into after-night. "This is the place. Away from this my life I a… - Muriel Rukeyser

Did you ever bury thirty-five men in a place in back of your house,
thirty-five tunnel workers the doctors didn't attend,
died in the tunnel camps, under rocks, everywhere, world without end.

only my fingers in your hair, only, my eyes
splitting the skull to tickle your brain with love
in a slow caress blurring the mind,
kissing your mouth awake
opening the body’s mouth and stopping the words. — Muriel Rukeyser, from “Three Sides of a Coin,” Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser. (University of Pittsburgh Press May 10th 2014)

These are our strength, who strike against history.
These whose corrupt cells owe their new styles of weakness to our diseases;

these carrying light for safety on their foreheads
descended deeper for richer faults of ore,
drilling their death.

These touching radium and the luminous poison,
carried their death on their lips and with their warning
glow in their graves.