[Intro — mellotron prominent and lush, fuzzy stoner groove establishing, surf guitar reverb shimmering over the top, B Phrygian, driving 112 BPM] [complex percussion locking into a hypnotic pulse, a world starting over] [Verse I — clear male vocal, determined narrative folk over the groove] [B Phrygian, mellotron bed, stoner groove hypnotic] I woke at the crossroads with the dust still settling, young hands, old eyes, and the whole road ahead. They think I'm a stranger — they don't feel the weight of it, that I've walked every mile of this, and watched all of them dead. The signpost still leans the same way it leaned then. The crows know my face before I know my name. I have done this so often the ground says hello to me, and I swore on the climb down: I won't waste it again. [Pre-Chorus — bass and mellotron swelling, groove tightening, drums driving] 'Cause the last time I stood where the spire meets the heavens, I held up the crystal and I broke the sky clean — sent myself backward to do it all over, and I did it alone, with no hand to hold mine. [Chorus — full band heavy and wide, stoner groove driving under folk delivery, mellotron soaring] [B Phrygian] So I'll walk it again — but awake this time, open, every face that I buried handed back for a while. And I won't climb the spire just to fold myself homeward — let it end when it ends. Let me feel every mile. Let the morning come forward. Let it stay where it lands. This time I walk it awake, with their hands in my hands. [Instrumental — fuzzy stoner riff driving, hard rock guitar improvisation, mellotron swells over the groove, E Phrygian] [Verse II — clear narrative over the hypnotic groove, the reunion] [B Phrygian, mellotron prominent, stoner rhythm] I find them the way I found them the first time — the laughing one, the quiet one, the one I will lose to the dark. They greet me like morning. They have no idea. And it costs me everything I have not to break. I will not steer us this time. I will not stay a blade. I won't spend the road bracing for the day that it ends. I'll say the things I swallowed. I'll mean every morning. I'll be no use as a soldier — but I'll be here as their friend. [Chorus — wider, fuller, the resolve burning] So I'll walk it again — but awake this time, open, every face that I buried handed back for a while. And I won't climb the spire just to fold myself homeward — let it end when it ends. Let me feel every mile. Let the morning come forward. Let it stay where it lands. This time I walk it awake, with their hands in my hands. [Outro — groove easing but not resolving, mellotron lush and forward, surf guitar reverb, B Phrygian, the road opening ahead] So we shoulder our packs. And the dark line is waiting. But I'm not who I was. I am terribly awake. And whatever it costs me — this time, I am theirs for the whole of the way.
