103 Days

Lyrics

[Intro]
Metacom is dead.
August, sixteen seventy-six.
The war is turning. The fever breaks.
We stir in our borrowed beds in Concord.
Time to go home.
If there is a home.

[Verse 1]
The air grew cold. Autumn came on.
We walked the road back from the safe towns.
No one spoke of what we'd find.
We just watched the leaves turn on the maples.
Watched the smoke from our own breath.
Each footstep a question.
Each mile a prayer we didn't dare say aloud.

[Chorus]
The whole town deserted.
Left to the rage of the enemy.
The rage of the weather, the rage of the weeds.
We stood on the common and saw nothing.
Nothing but ghosts of rooflines against a grey sky.
And the silence.
A silence that roared.

[Verse 2]
The meeting house was a ribcage of charcoal.
Pointing black fingers at God.
My hearth was a pit of cold ash and wet leaves.
The place I buried the pewter… just a hole.
Dug out by other hands.
The pigs had gone wild in the woods.
And the cornfields were a memory under thistle and goldenrod.

[Chorus]
The whole town deserted.
Left to the rage of the enemy.
The rage of the weather, the rage of the weeds.
We stood on the common and saw nothing.
Nothing but ghosts of rooflines against a grey sky.
And the silence.
A silence that roared.

[Bridge]
Reverend Brinsmead looked at the sky.
Major Willard was already in the ground.
There are no words for this kind of beginning.
You don't ask if you can.
You don't ask if you should.
You just look at the sun, low on the horizon,
and measure the work against the remaining light.

[Outro]
We picked up the first burnt timber.
Heavy with rain.
And started over.