The Last Longhouse Burning (version 2)

Verse

Last log cracks the firebox wide

Smoke drags slow across the sky

Old wolf howls at the half moon line

Says the winter's got no spine

Twenty winters on this timber beam

Carved with names in a language lost

Raven spreads his wings like a dark crown

Tells me every ending wears a sound

Pre-Chorus

Can you hear the rafters start to creak?

Something heavy waking, unappeased?

The fire eats what we built with hands

Ash and ember lift through the lands

Chorus

I let it burn before I drown

Watch the timbers fall around

Every winter has its throne

Nothing left but smoke and stone

So raise your axe to the last longhouse burning down

Let the sparks become a crown

Hold the flame before you drown

Verse

Your grandmother's comb hangs on the wall

Nails have rusted, one by one they fall

Mm-mm, I remember how you'd laugh in the snow

How your eyes caught amber when the fire glowed

Now that embers fill your chest like coal

I know better than to try and hold

The smoke forgets where it came from, goes

Still carries everyone it knows

Pre-Chorus

Can you hear the rafters start to creak?

Something heavy waking, unappeased?

The fire eats what we built with hands

Ash and ember lift through the lands

Chorus

I let it burn before I drown

Watch the timbers fall around

Every winter has its throne

Nothing left but smoke and stone

So raise your axe to the last longhouse burning down

Let the sparks become a crown

Hold the flame before you drown

Bridge

The raven's calling, every old man home

Ash becomes the earth that feeds the thorn

I'll carry nothing but what burns away

Carry you across this final day

Chorus

I let it burn before I drown

Watch the timbers fall around

Every winter has its throne

Nothing left but smoke and stone

So raise your axe to the last longhouse burning down

Let the sparks become a crown

Hold the flame before you drown