Mantle of Ages

Black rock
Blank sky
Clock starts
No why

Fire seas churn
Stone rain falls
Ten million mornings
Nothing at all
Four billion years in a molten sleep
Slow crust cools while the basins deep

Ash in the air
Red rivers crawl
Continents crack
Then they stall
One thin ocean
Bitter
Blind
A billion years pass
No mind

We wear the mantle of ages
mantle of ages
From silent stone to city cages
Every second on your skin
Took a thousand worlds to spin
We wear the mantle of ages
mantle of ages
Dust and data
Caves and stages
Every breath you're breathing now
Took an ancient earth to allow

Clouds turn clear
First sparks bloom
Single cells in a salt-blue gloom
Half a billion
Slow
Unseen
Life just lingers in the green

Then sudden bodies
Teeth and eyes
Forests climbing to the skies
Monsters walking river sand
Still no stories
Still no hand

We wear the mantle of ages
mantle of ages
From silent stone to city cages
Every second on your skin
Took a thousand worlds to spin
We wear the mantle of ages
Dust and data
Caves and stages
Every breath you're breathing now
Took an ancient earth to allow

Ice sheets grind
Mountains fade
Oceans swallow what they made
Comets carve the sky in two
Endings clearing paths for new

Tiny mammals under roots
Waiting centuries for boots
Then a whisper
Then a name
Only seconds in the game

We wear the mantle of ages
mantle of ages
From ember camps to glowing pages
Every heartbeat
Every town
Built on fossils underground
We wear the mantle of ages
First small tool to falling wages
All our kingdoms
Rise and rust
On a sphere of patient dust