Train Comes Through

It's a quiet night on main street where the poisoned water runs It'll never be the same street when the time appointed comes It's talked about in whispers, nothing certain, only rumor and clue But the violent sheet of silence will be shattered when the train comes through We may only be subordinates but we hear everything All your closed-door conversations, we're always listening We sense frequencies you'd never hear or think to pay attention to And we can tell what's on its way here long before the train comes through The real news comes in flashes, here and there among the noise Borderland insurgent clashes with the local army boys Who think they've got a handle on the territory, for at least a year or two It'll be too late to get out of the way by the time the train comes through This city is the bearer of an old and secret curse It's not written in your bibles, it's a verse behind a verse Only visible to an obsessive detail-oriented heathen Jew But it's the hidden and unspoken that will thunder when the train comes through Yes, we labored, and we built your dwellings here on the hillside The structures set in stone, not a chance they could slide But a great machine can break down suddenly if someone removes a tiny screw And the solid things will move in all directions when the train comes through They'll tell about your system as a system with no teeth The histories will name us as the people underneath The emptiness you'd only heard about was one we intimately knew But an emptiness is turned into a tunnel when a train comes through Oh A transfiguration's coming, a turning in the song To the brutal static order they've depended on so long This train will carry gamblers, it'll carry us midnight ramblers too And a broken heart's your ticket so be ready when the train comes through A broken heart's your ticket so be ready when the train comes through Ahh Ahh