"Train Comes Through" lyrics

It's a quiet night on Main Street where the poisoned water runs
It'll never be the same street when the time appointed comes
It's talked about in whispers, nothing certain, only rumor and clue
But the violent sheet of silence will be shattered when the train comes through

We may only be subordinates but we hear everything
All your closed-door conversations, we're always listening
We sense frequencies you'd never hear or think to pay attention to
And we can tell what's on its way here, long before the train comes through

The real news comes in flashes, here and there among the noise
Borderland insurgent clashes with the local army boys
Who think they've got a handle on the territory, for at least a year or two
It'll be Too late to get Out of the way By the time the train comes through

This city is the bearer of an old and secret curse
It's not written in your bibles, it's a verse behind the verse
Only visible to an obsessive detail-oriented heathen Jew
But it's the hidden and unspoken that will thunder when the train comes through

Yes, we labored and we built your dwellings here on the hillside
The structures set in stone, not a chance they could slide
But a great machine can break down suddenly if someone removes a tiny screw
And the solid things will move in all directions when the train comes through

They'll tell about your system as a system with no teeth
The histories will name us as the people underneath
The emptiness you'd only heard about was one we intimately knew
But an emptiness is turned into a tunnel when a train comes through

A transfiguration's coming, a turning in the song
To the brutal static order they've depended on so long
This train will carry gamblers, it'll carry us midnight ramblers too
And a broken heart's your ticket so be ready when the train comes through
A broken heart's your ticket so be ready when the train comes through