Who Moved You, and Where Did You Leave Them

Lyrics

[Intro]
Devon Island. No one has lived here for centuries.
The air is thin and cold, like a planet that isn't ours.
And in my hand, a bundle of letters, tied with twine that has bleached white in the weak sun.

[Verse 1]
They call you Sedentary Sam. I found that in a manifest.
It must have been a joke on the line.
Because I see you moving.
Always moving.
Lifting and tamping, the sun beating down.
Your hands, scarred from the lining bar.
Your shoulders, shaped by the 1.8 kilo pick.
Stamped Gandy Manufacturing Company, Chicago.
And inside this bleached twine, a voice.
A different kind of weight.
Someone who wrote to you.
Someone who knew you before the rails.

[Verse 2]
I can smell it. Cairo, Illinois.
12 August, 1907.
The creosote from the ties, baking in the heat.
Limestone dust coating your tongue.
Thirty-four degrees Celsius and no shade.
Just the chant-caller's cry…
…and the ring of steel.
A rhythm to hide in.
A noise to keep the other thoughts out.
Did you read these letters then? In the flickering light of a bunkhouse?
Or did their voice get lost in the sound of the work?

[Chorus]
Who was the one who moved you?
The fulcrum for your lever?
The voice that wasn't a call-and-response?
Who taught you how to stand still?
And why did you bring them here?
To the largest uninhabited island on Earth.
Why leave them in all this silence?

[Verse 3]
This work, was it a way of not-feeling?
A kind of stimming, back and forth, back and forth.
The same motion, the same sound, a thousand times a day.
Building a wall of rhythm against a world that was too loud, too much.
And these letters… were they the one thing that could break through?
The one voice you couldn't tamp down?
I trace the ink. A name I can't find in any record.
A ghost in the payroll books.

[Bridge]
They test for Mars up here now.
They practice being alone on another world.
You beat them to it, Sam.
You found the quietest place you could.
A place so empty you could finally hear what was written.
Or a place so vast you could let it go for good.
Did you even open them?

[Outro]
Who moved you?
And where… where did you leave them?
Here in the polar desert, under the katabatic winds.
I hold the question in my hands.
It weighs 1.8 kilos.