Interlude — The Dam at Fayville

Lyrics

The surface is glass today.
Boston drinks deep.
Frederick P. Stearns, he drew the lines in seventy-two.
Said the river had more to give.
The air turned to blasting powder,
the clang of shovel on stone.
We moved a cemetery for this.
Carved a new, wider bed for the water to sleep in.
A masonry core, an earthen wall.
Control.
Under the glass, the old Worcester Turnpike still runs east.
Cellar holes hold only silence now.
The stone foundations of the farms.
Gone.
They left by ninety-eight.
Packed their wagons and found higher ground.
We gave them a price.
Sometimes, in a dry August, a stone wall breaks the surface.
Just to say hello.
Just to remember the cost of a drink of water.