La Montagne

Lyrics

Here is the silence Frank White wrote about.
The view from the top of the mountain.
My face is pressed to the cold glass.
And you are there.

The climb was fire and a scream of metal.
A shaking that rattled the fillings in my teeth.
Then, a sudden quiet. A letting go.
We float now.
After the walk, my suit smelled of burnt steak and ozone.
A strange perfume for a new kind of world.
We left the ground to find the sky.
But we found you instead.

And from the top of this impossible mountain,
there are no countries.
There are no lines, just weather.
Just a single, breathing thing, turning in its sleep.
A blue halo on black velvet.

I look for the borders we killed each other for.
The arguments about whose god owns which patch of dirt.
I can’t see them.
Edgar Mitchell was right. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck.
Drag him a quarter of a million miles out.
And just point.
Look at that, you son of a bitch.

From the top of this impossible mountain,
there are no enemies.
There is no them, just the curve of a world.
Protected by a paper-thin whisper of air.
A blue masterpiece without a frame.

Rusty Schweickart said this is where you belong.
That your identity is with the whole thing.
You are the home I never truly saw until I left it.
The first eyes saw this on April 12, 1961.
Yuri Gagarin looked down and said your name.
He said, "How wonderful."

I am in the Cupola.
Seven windows on forever.
The Earth rises over the edge of the moon.
And for the first time, I see the whole map.
And it is only one place.
My home.