{9. TANTRAMAR STATION} The wind in the wires is a telegraph sound it’s harmony for the transformers’ hum searching for ground their tune’s in my head as I survey the salt flats’ expanse and as the night falls I search the towers for st. elmo’s dance he steps lightly illuminates the tantramar and it’s good company you don’t know how lonely we are out here
for fifty years we’ve shouted to the farthest reaches the voice of canada but now it seems nobody hears it these curtain arrays once stood for a nation’s pride from deep in the marshland we’ll throw it to the other side these coveralls will never stop the radiation’s pulse it throbs in the rectifiers pounding out its grim results this relic of the cold war is rusting on the
plains and the songs that it sings are just tired refrain from reminding me now of the time that’s still left to expire from holding our breath so we scale the rigging to keep these guys pulled tight to balance the tension for infinite line-of-sight and you’ll know our callsign by chords so urgently strained an act of parliament will cover up the cold remains of a structure its shadow on the shifting tidal bore engrave the epitaph on the sands of the fundy shore the arc of a wave the tiniest length carries the words in a dozen tongues we cast it away with all of our strength the details revealed the stories are
spun on a spool of wire an ancient desire coiled on ceramic to disperse the heat and swept by the winds to stoke up the fire we’re holding our breath we’ve yet to expire
with apologies to GORDON LIGHTFOOT
credits
from Great Plains: Home of the New Totem,
released March 15, 2007
Sean MacGillivray - vocals & guitar
Lachie MacDonald - bass
Jeffers Lennox - drums
engineered and recorded by J. LaPointe at The Archive
mastered by Noah Mintz at The Lacquer Channel
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