[Verse 1: operatic male lead, full voice over huge pounding drums] I was seven in the library with a book about the sky And a picture of a black sun with a white ring round its eye And I swore I'd stand beneath one, and I swore I'd see it whole Forty years of cloudy summers, and I kept it like a coal Drove a thousand miles on Sunday to a hilltop in the corn Where ten thousand total strangers had been waitin' since the dawn [Pre-Chorus: the guitars building, the harmonies stacking up] Then the moon took the first bite out, and the light went thin and gold And the cows lay down in the pasture, and the wind came in cold [Chorus: operatic male lead, huge multi-part harmonies, the whole band] Totality, the whole of it, the sun is gone, the sky is ours Totality, the middle of the day turned into stars I drove a thousand miles to watch the daylight take a fall Totality, and all of it was people after all [Verse 2: operatic male lead, the drums pounding harder] There's a trucker with his mother, there's a teacher with her class There's a welder from Ohio holdin' up his welding glass There's a farmer sellin' coffee off a tailgate, two a cup And a girl down in a wheelchair with her face already up Ninety seconds to the darkness, and the whole hill holds its breath And I hold my cardboard glasses like a ticket, like the rest [Pre-Chorus: the guitars building] Then the moon took the first bite out, and the light went thin and gold And the cows lay down in the pasture, and the wind came in cold [Chorus: huge multi-part harmonies] Totality, the whole of it, the sun is gone, the sky is ours Totality, the middle of the day turned into stars I drove a thousand miles to watch the daylight take a fall Totality, and all of it was people after all [Bridge: the whole band hangs on one suspended chord through the dark, unresolved, his voice alone on top] Then it's gone, the sun is gone, it's midnight in the afternoon And the whole horizon's sunset, all the way around the moon And I waited forty years to look up, forty years to stare But I turned around, I don't know why, and saw them standin' there [Verse 3: operatic male lead, the chord finally resolving as the first light breaks the edge] Ten thousand faces turned up silver, every mouth a perfect O And the trucker's holdin' on his mother like he'll never let her go And the welder's got his arm around a stranger from the vans And the teacher's class is quiet, and they're holdin' all their hands Two minutes and forty seconds, and I never saw the sun I saw everybody seein' it, and that's the better one [Chorus: everything in, the harmonies at full height] Totality, the whole of it, the sun is gone, the sky is ours Totality, the middle of the day turned into stars I drove a thousand miles to watch the daylight take a fall Totality, and all of it was people after all [End]
