Steam Clock Odyssey

I found a gear with tomorrow inside

Turning warm in my soot-black hand

Smoke wrote the morning across the mill

Iron teeth bit time in two

He hid his blueprints under the sill

And wound the clock no king ever knew

Coal dust clung to his collarbone

But the future hummed in brass and screw He counted sparks like

seconds falling Pulled the lever,

crossed the line

Every rivet started calling

Backwards, forwards, out of time

Turn the wheel, let the old world burn bright

Steel heart running through the blackened night He came from a year

no furnace could hold With a pocket full of thunder and a

future made of gold

He stepped through steam to a crowded fair

Past brass machines and borrowed bread

Sold one lamp that cleaned the air

Then watched the owners tax it dead

So he carved a second secret door

For every worker bent and bled

If he saves them,

he may never be born If he leaves them,

the gears grind on He sees his name on a factory wall

Then scratches it out

before the dawn

Turn the wheel, let the old world burn bright

Steel heart running through the blackened night He came from a year

no furnace could hold With a pocket full of thunder and a

future made of gold Turn the wheel,

let the old world turn new Every broken hour can be remade

true

Turn the wheel Turn it true

Steel heart

Carry us through