The Wire Sings a Ballad

In a concrete canyon courtroom, where the flashbulbs pop and gleam A former king of golden towers is living out a dream Or a nightmare, says the paper, depends which side you're on Thirty-four counts read like thunder, now the power's almost gone The jury's got no faces, the verdict's sharp and clean For the ledgers and the stories that were never meant to be seen And the whole world stops to listen, to a story old as rust About a man of great ambition, and who it is you trust.

Oh, the wire sings a ballad in the early morning light Of the battles won and lost and what is wrong and what is right From the silicon to the gavel, from the desert to the shore It's a story I've heard somewhere, a thousand times before And the teller's just a-strumming, on a weary, worn-out string To make a little sense of what the weary new day brings. Out in California Valley, where the new gold rush is on They're mining pure intelligence from twilight to the dawn

A man in a leather jacket holds the future in his hand Selling thinking-chips to dreamers all across this promised land They say a ghost is in the wires, a mind that learns and grows It's a miracle, a terror, well, nobody really knows But the stocks are climbing skyward, a frantic, hopeful prayer For a brand new kind of magic hanging heavy in the air. Oh, the wire sings a ballad in the early morning light Of the battles won and lost and what is wrong and what is right

From the silicon to the gavel, from the desert to the shore It's a story I've heard somewhere, a thousand times before And the teller's just a-strumming, on a weary, worn-out string To make a little sense of what the weary new day brings. And while the humans make their dramas, the sky just does its thing The heat dome settles heavy, not a whisper of the spring The sirens wail in Kansas as the twisters touch the ground And the old folks watch the weather, without a single sound

They know the earth is speaking, in a language clear and old A headline that's not written, a story to be told. Oh, the wire sings a ballad in the early morning light Of the battles won and lost and what is wrong and what is right From the silicon to the gavel, from the desert to the shore It's a story I've heard somewhere, a thousand times before And the teller's just a-strumming, on a weary, worn-out string To make a little sense of what the weary new day brings.