Up Up Up Up Up Up

You cease to smell the steel plant
After you've lived there for a while
Smoke is snow is ash are leaves that blow
Through the air aloft
All our houses dim their sliding
To the same soot gray style
And we hang our laundry out on sundays
When they turn the furnaces off

Everybody's daddy works up on the line
The stienbrenners and the wilczewskis
Have been there the longest time
Everybody's mommy squints into the sun
Sunday afternoon after all the laundry's done

Sometimes a distant siren
Can set a dog to barking late at night
Then it dominos on down
Til every dog is joining in
The first rumours of the layoffs
Sang like a distant siren might
And we all perked up our ears
And paced the fence
Of the ensuing din

Every night, we were glued to the tv news
At six o'clock
Cuz it was hard to tell what was real
And what was talk
They explained about the cutbacks
All the earnest frowns
But what they didn't say was that the plant
Was slowly shutting down

This town is not the kind of place
That money people go
They make their jokes up on the tv
About all the snow
And they're building condos downriver
From where the plant had been
But nobody really lives here
Now that the air is clean

The president assured us
It was all gonna trickle down
Like it'd be raining so much money
That we'd be sad to see the sun
Mr. wilczewski's brother had some business
Out in denver
So they left denver
And everybody knows they were the lucky ones

You cease to smell the steel plant
After you'v ebeen here for a while

Up up up up up up points the
Spire of the steeple
But god's work isn't done by god
It's done by people

Up up up up up up points the
Fingers of the trees
The lumberjacks with their bloody axes
Are on their knees

And just when you think that you've got enough
Enough grows
And everywhere that you go in life
Enough knows

Up up up up up up dances
The steam from the sewer
As she rounds the corner
The brutal wind blows right through her

Up up up up up up raises
The stakes of the game
Each day sinks its bootprint into her clay
And she's not the same

And just when you think that you've got enough
Enough grows
And everywhere that you go in life
Enough knows

Half of learning how to play
Is learning what not to play
And she's learning the spaces she leaves
Have their own things to say
Then she's trying to sing just enough
So that the air around her moves
And make music like mercy
That gives what it is
And has nothing to prove

She crawls out on a limb
And begins to build her home
Amd it's enough just to look around
To know she's not alone

Up up up up up up points
The spire of the steeple
But god's work isn't done by god
It's done by people

In the jukebox of her memory
The list of names flips by and stops
She closes her eyes
And smiles as the record drops

Then she drinks herself up and out
Of her kitchen chair
And she dances out of time
As slow as she can sway
For as long as she can say
This dance is mine
This dance is mine

Her hair bears silent witness
To the passing of time
Tattoos like mile markers
Map the distance she has gone
Winning some, losing some
She says my sister still calls every sunday night
After the rates go down
And i can never manage to say anything right
My whole life blew up
And now its all coming down

And she says leave me alone
Tonight i just wanna stay home
She fills the pot with water
She drops in the bone
She says, i've got a darkness that i have to feed
I've got a sadness
That grows up around me like a weed
And i'm not hurting anyone
I'm just spiraling in
As she closes her eyes
And hears the song begin again

She appreciates the phone calls
The consoling cards and such
She appreciates all the people
Who come by and try to pull her back in touch
They try to hold the lid down tightly
And they try to shake well
But the oil and water
Just want to separate themselves

She drinks herself up and out of her kitchen chair
And she dances out of time
As slow as she can sway
For as long as she can say
This dance is mine
This dance is mine
This dance is mine

'tis of thee

They caught the last poor man
On a poor man's vacation
They cuffed him and confiscated his stuff
They dragged his black ass down to the station
And said, ok, the streets are safe now
All your pretty white children can come out and see spot run
And they came out of their houses
And they looked around
But they didn't see no one

My country 'tis of thee
To take swings at each other on the talkshow tv
Why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun
Cuz we'll never live long enough
To undo everything they've done to you
Undo everything they've done to you

Above 96th street
They're handing out smallpox blankets so people don't freeze
The old dogs have got a new trick
It's called criminalize the symptoms
While you spread the disease
And i hold on hard to something
Between my teeth when i'm sleeping
I wake up and my jaw aches
And the earth is full of earthquakes

My country 'tis of thee
To take shots at each other on prime time tv
Why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun
Cuz we'll never live long enough
To undo everything they've done to you
Undo everything they've done to you

They caught the last poor man
Flying away in a shiny red cape
They took him down to the station
And they said, boy, you should've known better
Than to try to escape
I ran away with the circus
Cuz there's still some honest work left for bearded ladies
But it's not the same going town to town
Since they put everyone in jail
Exceot the cleavers and the brady's

My country 'tis of thee
To take swings at each other on the talkshow tv
Why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun
Cuz we'll never live long enough
To undo everything they've done to you
Undo everything they've done to you

Growing up it was just me and my mom
Against the world
And all my sympathies were with her
When i was a little girl
But now i've seen both my parents
Play out the hands they were dealt
And as each year goes by
I know more about how my father must have felt

I just want you to understand
That i know what all the fighting was for
And i just want you to understand
That i'm not angry anymore
I'm not angry anymore

She taught me how to wage a cold war
With quiet charm
But i just want to walk
Through my life unarmed
To accept and just get by
Like my father learned to do
But without all the acceptance and getting by
That got my father through

Night falls like people into love
We generate our own light
To compensate
For the lack of light from above
Every time we fight
A cold wind blows our way

But we learn like the trees
How to bend
How to sway and say

I, i think i understand
What all this fighting is for
And baby, i just want you to understand
That i'm not angry anymore
No, i'm not angry anymore

In walked a man in the shape of a man
Holding a hat-shaped hat
He held up two fingers and said 'how many fingers?"
And i said 'peace man, that's where it's at"
I said you are what you do in order to
Prevent becoming what you're busy not doing
And if you do do it truly
Then you arrive at it newly
Then in the end you are absolved
And the problem of heaven is solved

And the man broke into a smile,
Like he was breaking into a song
And he was broken and smiling
And i was singing along
And we agreed completely agreetly about most things
'til the sun set sweetly
Like it does in those paintings
The ones they hang in hotel rooms
The ones they bolt to the wall
As though anyone would want to steal them at all

We talked like children without breathing
'til i stopped this lady as she was leaving
And i said 'excuse me,
But do you know what time it would be
If we were on mars ?'
And she held up her hand
Like a crossing guard stopping the cars
And she said
Five in the morning

In walked a man
In the shape of a man
Holding a hat shaped hat