Pandora's Engine

Pandora’s Engine

Twin ribbons line the landscape
Carving up the land
Rusty tracks and tumbleweeds
and arid desert sands
With ominous austerity
Belaying what’s in store
The present swears sincerity
The future’s its own law
You feel it coming down the track
You hear it in your bones
A ghost train ripping through the land
The speed that we atone
With human sin its only freight
Forever riding rails
Picking up at every stop
That mournful whistle wails
But the tracks are getting older now
Rusted warped and cracked
Ignored by all, Pandora’s call
Whistles long and black
A shadow tearing through the night
Ripping through the day
Red ribbons bind the things we lack
The rusty tracks on which we play
Lest they be forgotten
Abandoned in the past
Ignored but for Pandora
Her engines gaining fast
Gaining fast on rails warped
With a cargo of decay
Locked onto a dead man’s course
With hell on earth to pay