The Cyclorama's Grand Tour

Lyrics

You were born in Milwaukee.
Eighteen eighty-six.
To the smell of turpentine and oil paint.
Stretched out under German hands that had never felt Atlanta heat.

They gave you a sky forty-two feet high.
A battlefield three hundred and fifty-eight feet around.
They painted a general on a horse he never rode.
A fiction built to hold a terrible truth.
A memory you never had,
dreamed up in a Wisconsin winter.

But you were meant for Minneapolis.
A northern town was supposed to be your home.
Somehow the map got folded wrong.
And the iron rails sang a different song,
pulling you south on your grand tour.

They rolled you up, a giant's scroll.
Laid you in a freight car built just for your bones.
You were a rumor in Chicago for a while.
A traveling storm, held silent in the dark.
Waiting for walls that could contain your circle.
Waiting for the light.

You were meant for Minneapolis.
A northern town was supposed to be your home.
Somehow the map got folded wrong.
And the iron rails sang a different song,
pulling you south on your grand tour.

And then, Grant Park.
They built you a round house, a temple for a single god.
Unfurled you for a city that saw its own ghost in your paint.
A homecoming to a place you'd only ever seen in sketches.
The painted cannons fell silent
as the real crickets chirped outside.

Your tour is over now.
You settled in the Georgia quiet.
A long way from that Milwaukee room.
A long way from Minneapolis.
A long, winding way home.