Humming in the Grain

Verse 1

I found the door beneath the sand

where the river used to run

The writing on the walls still warm

from someone else's sun

I pressed my hand against the stone

and felt it pressing back

A thousand years of silence

and it still remembers that

Chorus

I'm not the first to stand here

I'm not the last to try

To read the names of everyone

who looked up at this sky

And all the gods they carried

and all the songs they made

Are living in the limestone

are sleeping in the shade

Verse 2

The ceilings painted indigo

with gold that's almost gone

I lie down on the temple floor

and hum a borrowed song

The dust has its own gravity

it pulls you to the ground

I think the ones who built this place

are still here looking down

Chorus

I'm not the first to stand here

I'm not the last to try

To read the names of everyone

who looked up at this sky

And all the gods they carried

and all the songs they made

Are living in the limestone

are sleeping in the shade

Bridge

There's a painting on the eastern wall

of a figure walking alone

Through a landscape I recognize

though I've never called it home

They're carrying a lantern

toward a horizon line

And I realize I'm looking

at a portrait drawn of mine

Outro

And the columns are still standing

and the stairs still climb

And the water still remembers

how to find the lowest line

And the echoes are still faithful

and the carvings still remain

And whatever they believed in

is still humming in the grain

I'll leave my name beside the others

scratched into the door

Not because I matter

but because I'm walking through

the same world they were walking

and I love it just as much

and I don't want to be forgotten

and I don't think that they did either

and I think that's all this is

and I think that's all this was