Bells

(Brühlmann/Frey)

There’s a hum in the wind, with a tone deep within
floating tender and slow above the valley below
through the ravines and cuts, along the slopes and the rocks rises up with the breeze, joins the birds in the trees

Across the rivers of ice, where there is nothing but sky
lies a sonorous chord like a motionless sigh
it’s so soft and so bare, yet it’s filling the air
if you’re listening well, you can tell, it’s the sound of a bell… from a different time

Where the stream used to swirl, spraying diamonds and pearls now its bed lying dry and it runs in a pipe
from the reservoir dam, holding a lake made by man
where down at the bottom a bell tower stands

It’s sixty years now, they abandoned their homes
left their poor crops and a land full of stones
and when thy were gone and the village was drowned their dead were still buried there in the ground hearing the bells from the depth of the water

they lock up their doors because their forefathers come begging for a dry place to sleep

There’s a hum in the wind, with a tone deep within
floating tender and slow above the valley below
it’s so soft and so bare, yet it’s filling the air
if you’re listening well, you can tell, it’s the sound of a bell… from a different time