Come gather round, friends,
and I'll tell you a tale
Of where the red iron orbits run aplenty
At the carpet -filled windows
and old men on the benches
Tell you now that the whole town is empty
In the north end of town
my own children are gone
But I was raised on the other
In the years of youth
my mother took sick
And I was brought up by my brother
The iron oar pulled
as the years passed the door
The drag lines and the shovels
they was humming
Till one day my brother
failed to come home
The same as my father before him
Where the long winters
waved
from the window I watched
And my friends,
they couldn't have been kinder
Till my school was cut
as I quit in the spring
To marry John Thomas, a miner
All the years passed again
and the giving was good
With a lunch bucket filled every season
There were three babies born,
the work was cut down
To a half a day's shift with no reason
And the shaft was soon shut
and my work was cut
And the fire in the air, felt frozen
Until a man came to speak
and he said in one week
That number 11 was closing
They complain in these,
they're paying too high
And they say that your ore
ain't worth digging
And it's much cheaper down
in the South American towns
Where the miners work almost for
nothing
So the morning gates locked
and the red iron rugged
And the room smelled heavy from drinking
And the sad siren's song
breathed the air twice as long
As I waited for the sun to go sinking
I lived by the window
as he talked to himself
And the silence of transit was building
Till one morning's wake the bed,
it was black
And I's left alone with three children
The summer is gone
and the ground's turning cold
And the stars, one by one, they are falling
My children will go as soon as they come
For there ain't nothing here now
to hold us