Mary Gay: A War's Witness

Lyrics

[Intro]
July twentieth, eighteen sixty-four.
The air so thick you could taste the dust.
Even the cicadas held their breath.
We knew what was coming.
We could hear the change on Sycamore Street.

[Verse 1]
The sound wasn't thunder.
It was hooves.
Thousands of them, beating the red clay into powder.
General Garrard's men.
Blue coats like a stain spreading down the road.
Our street was swarming.
Every window, a pair of frightened eyes.
The enemy was upon us.
And my brother Thomas, somewhere in the gray.

[Chorus]
No tongue can tell the anguish.
The tramp of the invader's foot in the hall.
My mother Sarah, her face a porcelain mask.
Their hands on the linen, on the family silver we buried in the yard.
This house is just a box of air they've broken into.
Our lives, just household goods for their taking.

[Verse 2]
Two days later, the Square caught fire.
The battle came right to our door.
Acrid smoke mixing with the scent of gardenias.
We huddled in the parlor, listening to the world tear apart.
Each musket shot a punctuation mark.
Each cannon blast, a sentence ending.
This wasn't war from a newspaper.
This was the smell of gunpowder in our curtains.

[Chorus]
No tongue can tell the anguish.
The tramp of the invader's foot on the stairs.
My mother Sarah, her hands trembling in her lap.
Their hands on the feather beds, searching for warmth, for anything.
This house is just a box of air they've broken into.
Our lives, just household goods for their taking.

[Bridge]
And the strangest thing...
Amidst the shouting and the splintering wood...
I found myself worrying about a painting.
A prizefighter, half-naked on the wall.
Would they slash the canvas?
Or steal it for the gilded frame?
A foolish, floating thought.
A little boat of madness in a sea of fear.

[Outro]
They left.
The house still stands.
But the silence they left behind is different.
It’s a heavy quiet.
Full of echoes.
Full of their touch.