The City That
Left the Earth

Ah
Ah
Ah

Before the dawn
Three notes are falling
Before the dawn
The city is calling

Under the street
Under the stone
Something is turning
Something unknown

Can you hear it?
Can you hear it?

Before the dawn
The wires awaken
Before the dawn
The silence is breaking

Twelve bells fall through empty streets
Silver rain moves through the square
Windows burn above the roofs
But no one seems to live in there

Midnight city
Turning without sleep
Midnight city
What do your foundations keep?

Underneath the avenue
Hidden engines breathe below
Every tower leans to hear
Words the living never know

Ah
Ah
Ah

Midnight city
Open up your eyes
Midnight city
Something underneath you rises

Leave the sleeping world below
Go where no living map can go
Midnight city
Carry us into the night

The glass parliament gathers at two
With silver tongues and transparent views
They vote on the colour the morning should wear
Then close every curtain and leave it nowhere

They measure the rain
They number the sky
They write down the reasons
The daylight must die

The glass parliament listens in rows
To speeches delivered by mechanical crows
They draw little borders around every sound
Then wonder why silence is filling the town

They catalogue thunder
They regulate dreams
They seal every doorway
And widen the seams

The ceiling bends
The columns breathe
A silver crack
Runs underneath

Who gave the city permission to rise?
Who gave the city permission to rise?

The tables turn
The windows shake
The chamber fills
With waking light

The glass parliament gathers no more
Their names lie scattered across the floor
The chairs remain seated in perfect rows
While something beneath them awakens and grows

Instrumental — no lyrics.

The chain begins beneath the floor
A quiet weight behind the door
It joins the tower to the street
It joins the engine to our feet

The chain runs underneath the square
Through every wall and every stair
It knows the path that no one sees
It binds the locks and keeps the keys

The chain remembers every name
The lost, the silent and the blamed
It circles back through steel and stone
And makes the borrowed city home

I pulled until my hands were red
I heard the words the sleepers said
You cannot break
What has no end
You cannot leave
What you defend

The chain is neither lock nor wall
It is the thread between us all
The city rises, links remain
We leave the Earth but keep the chain

The first room held a map of home
But every road was drawn in smoke
The rivers climbed the paper walls
The compass pointed through the floor

A hundred clocks without their hands
Were ticking underneath the sand
Each second opened like an eye
Then closed before it saw me pass

The third room floated upside down
With chairs suspended from the ground
A pale moon trembled in a glass
And whispered that the night had passed

The walls began to speak my name
In voices borrowed from the rain
They said the city knew the way
But every answer changed its shape

Keep walking
Keep walking
There is no door behind you

The final room contained no wall
No ceiling, window, floor at all
A thousand rooms fell out of sight
And left me standing in the night

Far below
The engines turned
Far above
The signal burned

Who drew the border around the stars?
We did not
Who placed the night behind iron bars?
We did not

The astronomer climbed the eastern tower
With broken charts and a stolen hour
He turned the lenses away from Mars
And aimed them down at the city's heart

Who told the heavens where to end?
No one knows
Who made the planets our enemies?
No one knows

He cut the wires beneath the dome
And sent one signal into the unknown
The engines answered under the street
The constellations moved beneath his feet

I watched the moon
Turn inside out
I watched the sky
Release its doubt

No throne above
No chain below
Only the road
The planets know

Who gives the city the right to fly?
We give it now
Who opens the road beyond the sky?
We open it now

The astronomer raised his empty hand
The towers rose at his command

Carry me beyond the turning world
Space song
Carry me beyond the turning world
Space song

No north above
No south below
No road to leave
No road to know

Carry me beyond the turning world
Space song

The stars are windows
The dark is clear
The Earth grows smaller
Then disappears

Carry me beyond the turning world
Space song
Carry me beyond the turning world
Space song

Beyond the world
Beyond the world
Space song

Before the dawn
The signal came
Across the roofs
Across the rain

Beneath the streets
The engines heard
Three notes became
A waking world

The bridges loosen from the shore
The towers rise without a sound
The avenues become the sky
The rivers leave their beds below

No king commands
No clock remains
The glass has broken
From its frame

City of midnight
City of light
Carry our names
Out of the night

Leave every border
Leave every chain
Never return
To the Earth again

Ah
Ah
Ah

The oceans became a mirror
The mountains became a line
The world became a distant lantern
Turning beneath us

After the night
A morning came
Without a shore
Without a name

Every window faced the stars
Every street became a road
The city carried all we were
Into the endless afterglow

City of midnight
City reborn
You carried the night
And returned it as dawn

Beyond every border
Beyond every chart
The city that left the Earth
Still turns in the dark