The Universal Fire Lyrics

Our religion was electric Magnetic singing on a wire Invisible waves Making kings out of slaves Encoding all freedom and desire We pulled it down from the sky To make us dance and make us cry But one night it all burned away In the Universal Fire They came singing in the darkness Shuttles rocking in the loom of night Ten million souls Weighed out in silver and gold Two million gone straight to the light They wept and they moaned and they called down The intercession of some nameless choir But the angels just let them keep singing Until the night that it all burned away In the Universal Fire Gravity pushes down the stylus God disappears into the sky Electroplated silver Cuts the master from the mirror Every one the iteration of a lie But we had Satchmo and The Killer and Sun Ra We had Bo Diddley Big Mama and John Lee Every soul now lossless in heaven Until the night that it all burned away In the Universal Fire You can photograph a painting through a screen door You can try to square the circle down But the God that you serve is God of the curve The irreducible mystery going ‘round Left all alone with the copies Of the copies of the the masters of the name Celluloid reels gone up in ashes and steel Just the picture of a picture in a frame It was Lady Day and Muddy and Coltrane Little Walter and Rosetta and Ray There was time when it seemed We might all be redeemed But one night it all burned away In the Universal Fire