A Hundred Years From Now

The old sea walls are gardens now, Salt has taught the roses how to climb, My grandmother's kitchen is underwater, But her recipes still keep good time. We speak in borrowed tongues and broken code, Half machine, half memory, half prayer, The maps redrew themselves without asking, And still somebody has to live somewhere.

So hold my hand across the hundred years, Hold my hand though we never breathe the same air, The world keeps ending and somehow keeps starting, And somebody's always still there.

The children learn the names of birds we lost, From holograms their great-grandparents drew, They ask us why we let the summers burn, We don't have an answer that's true. The towers learned to grow like forests do, Steel and moss and solar skin, We traded oil for algorithms, And called it letting the future in.

So hold my hand across the hundred years, Hold my hand though we never breathe the same air, The world keeps ending and somehow keeps starting, And somebody's always still there.

Is this the peace we prayed for, Or just the quiet after the noise? Is this the peace we prayed for, Or the sound of a planet finding its poise?

There's a border checkpoint made of light now, It asks you questions the guards used to ask, Are you who your data says you are, Can a soul survive behind a mask? The refugees of flooded harbors, Built a city on the old ash plain, They call it Second Rotterdam, And it never quite forgets the rain.

So hold my hand across the hundred years, Hold my hand though we never breathe the same air, The world keeps ending and somehow keeps starting, And somebody's always still there.

The machines write letters to the dead now, In voices we almost still remember, My father's laugh comes through a speaker, Every year on a Tuesday in September, And I don't know if that's a mercy, Or a wound we keep picking anew, But I'll take any way of holding on, To getting one more word from you.

Somewhere a choir made of strangers, Sings a song that has no name, Somewhere the wars have gone quiet, And somewhere they're not the same, We carry both those somewheres, In every breath we take, The century didn't heal us, It just taught us what to make.

So here's to the hundred years from Sunday, Whatever this Sunday's worth, Here's to the hands that keep on building, Long after we're back in the earth, The oceans will keep their own accounting, The children will keep asking why, And somewhere, someone's always singing, Under a rearranged sky.

[Chorus - Final] So hold my hand across the hundred years, Hold my hand though we never breathe the same air, The world keeps ending and somehow keeps starting, And somebody's always, always there.

A hundred years from Sunday, Somebody's still there. A hundred years from Sunday, Somebody's still there.