Battle of Decatur: Powder Smoke on the Square

Lyrics

[Intro]
July.
Twenty-second. Eighteen sixty-four.
The air is so thick you can't breathe.
Something's coming.

[Verse 1]
The dust kicks up on Sycamore Street. Not from a carriage.
It’s a different kind of hurry.
Blue coats pour past the courthouse.
Taking cover behind the brick walls, the ones from '41.
Wheeler's men are coming down the tracks from Augusta way.
I heard them shouting.
It wasn't a rumor.
It's here now.

[Chorus]
Oh, the powder smoke on the square.
Acrid, white, hanging in the air.
The sound of the world tearing.
The sound of a promise breaking.
Powder smoke on our square.

[Verse 2]
There's a boy, can't be more than sixteen, reloading by the well.
His hands are shaking.
General Blair's men, they call them.
They're trying to hold the railroad line.
A volley from the rooftops. Glass shatters in the tavern window.
Horses screaming.
The courthouse lawn is trampled mud and blood.
This isn't a town anymore.

[Chorus]
Oh, the powder smoke on the square.
Acrid, white, caught in my hair.
The sound of the world tearing.
The sound of a promise breaking.
Powder smoke on our square.

[Bridge]
Mary Gay heard it from her house.
She wrote it down.
"A heavy thud."
That was the neighbor's chimney.
Just a pile of brick now.
The cannonading from Atlanta is a constant roar.
But this... this is different.
This is our home splintering.
This is the war in our own front yard.

[Chorus]
Oh, the powder smoke on the square!
Acrid, white, a suffocating prayer!
The sound of the world tearing!
The sound of a promise breaking!
Powder smoke on our square!

[Outro]
The shooting stops.
For a moment.
The smoke starts to clear.
And you can see the holes.
The holes in the courthouse.
In the trees.
In everything.