The Dying Firefighter - David Rovics

I saw the plane hit the building

The flames and the billowing smoke

I saw the glass, paper, metal and stone

Everything shattered and broke

I was there with my people

Engine Company 24

We rushed into the building

Got as far as the 35th floor

The black smoke and the heat was like nothing

I’d seen in all of my years

With each step in that blazing inferno

You could feel destiny near

In the midst of the falling girders

The sheet rock and God knows what else

I tried to find the survivors

Those who made it to the stairwells

I carried the wounded to safety

If that’s what you might call the street

With bodies and boulders and metal

All crashing down by your feet

As #2 was collapsing

When only ten floors still stood

Everything was falling around me

Like it was made out of cardboard and wood

It was just then I heard someone

Trapped underneath the debris

I started pulling at something

And that’s when the fire got me

I was pinned 'neath the rubble

And the flames were licking my coat

And the pain, the unbearable agony

And then that was all that she wrote

But I just wish I could tell you

Before I am taken away

That I’ve seen a lot of this world

And there’s something that I gotta say

I don’t believe in politics

I believe in the human race

I believe in the goodness of people

In New York or some far-away place

I believe in my daughter

And I believe in my wife

And may nobody’s father be taken

To avenge the loss of my life

People may call me a brave man

And this may very well be

But the firefighters of Kabul

Are just as brave men as me