The Earth Remembers Only Silence

[Intro] (A distant piano note rings like a bell across a frozen field then a cello breathes low The sound of childrens laughter fades in and out then a single violin harmonic hangs in the air before dissolving into the wind) [Verse 1] I traced the names on stones that bite the cold, Each chiseled letter heavier than gold. The earth gives back no harvest, only rust, And fragments of a morning turned to dust. A helmet turned into a robin's nest, The rusted steel at last allowed to rest. The crows like omens circle overhead, Reciting elegies for all the d**d. [Pre-Chorus] The elders said that time would dress the plain, But time has only woven deeper grain. No monument can tell the roots to mourn, They only know the light of a new dawn. [Chorus] Let the banners fall like autumn leaves at last, A quiet earth where every w*r has passed. No trumpet call, no medal made of tears, Just the low hum of grass across the years. Let the soil remember what the stone forgot, A field of quiet on a hallowed plot. No drum, no roar, no steel, no splintered sky, Only the quiet when the echoes die. [Verse 2] My sister's voice still trembles in the reeds, She sang of gardens overgrown with weeds. The tide erases footprints one by one, And every wave a requiem begun. A thousand dialects in one white shell, The only treaty that the ocean tells. I saw a soldier carving roses out of tin, They wilted like the hope he held within. [Pre-Chorus] They built a monument of marble and of guilt, But the frost is where the truest tears are spilt. So lay the bugle down, the blade, the pen, And let the healing silence start again. [Chorus] Let the banners fall like autumn leaves at last, A quiet earth where every w*r has passed. No trumpet call, no medal made of tears, Just the low hum of grass across the years. Let the soil remember what the stone forgot, A field of quiet on a hallowed plot. No drum, no roar, no steel, no splintered sky, Only the quiet when the echoes die. [Bridge] (A choir of fallen voices rises gravely a solo violin keens and swells into a gathering of strings The timpani pulses like a faltering heartbeat then softens to a whisper) What treaty can unbind the frozen chain? What seed can sprout where sorrow is the rain? The armies are not gone, they're just asleep, Their voices folded in the roots we keep. The fifes push through the silence, shrill and white, Their notes like braille for any trace of light. "Let the cold be only season, not a shroud, Let the earth remember only what we vowed." [Final Chorus] (All voices rise men and women old and young in a cascade of harmony then pull back to a single piano and voice) Let the fifes fall still like snow on every scar, Let the children race where the trenches are. Break the ice that grips the buried steel, Melt the years to something we can feel. Let the morning break with hands that plant and build, And the hollows ring with all the promise spilled. No blaze of brass, no drum to mark the years, Just the sound of rain baptizing all our fears. [Outro] (The piano plays the main theme one last time slow and spare A child hums softly the cello returns deep and serene The wind through wheat fields rises a harp plucks a final ascending note and the frozen landscape melts into the sound of a field at dawn)