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field works - pogue out walking lyrics

[verse 1]
when old george pogue came back, he came back hunting. he was on the hunt for wyandotte john. that’s the double+crossing brave who walked george off over a hill one morning—the last morning of his life. this is 1819. this is way back, back before the beginning of everything. old george pogue says to wyandotte john, “some of your kind has rustled my horses.” wyandotte john, he nodded and he said that he knew who. john said, “this way,” and pogue, he followed one clear, bright, early morning before everything began. george followed him right along the gritty brown banks of the muddy low river that bore his name—and it’s called for pogue because, who else could it be called for? who else was even around? so, it’s 1819, it’s a crystal blue march morning, and george headed out in the questionable company of wyandotte john, riding on the one horse he’s still got. he took his rifle, and he took his dog. he left behind his wife and seven children in their st+rdy wooden hut that looked out on the little river. few months later, folks found the bones of the horse and they found the bones of the dog. wyandotte john had turned into wind

[verse 2]
but the wife was still there in the st+rdy house—the wife and the children—and the river kept on running. small river, winding river, muddy river, not quite a river. more of a stream, more of a creek or a crick. a run. a gurgling brown twist of shallow running water, burbling along toward the wider white. would’ve been pogue’s river, were it wide enough or strong. but it weren’t. pogue’s run. when old george pogue came back, he came back angry, came back hot, with the h+ll’s own heat, long gun in hand, burning for vengeance. as a matter of fact, his rage was hot enough that when he rose up outta that creek, steam came up with him, boiling off his body into the indiana air

[verse 3]
he was up around 30th street, near the mysterious mouth of the river, where it just sort of wells up out of nowhere. pogue recognized his namesake run right off. recognized the familiar slopes of the bank, recognized the feel of the sh+lls and the smell of that low brown water. it took him a second, though, to see that he was standing not on an empty, quiet hill in the middle of an empty, quiet stretch of the american experience, but rather in front of the general store called charlie’s market, and behind him, backing up to his run, was a row of boxy dwellings built of material he didn’t recognize. these were trailer homes. what did old dead george pogue know about trailer homes? to him, they looked like packing crates or coffins. “and where the h+ll’s my wife?” is what he was thinkin’. “and where’s the little ones? and most of all, where’s blasted wyandotte john?” but all of them are gone, buried in the ground, drowned in the shallow run. he was no dummy, george pogue, walking south along the bank, wondering at the changed world. he figured out that he was dead as well. and he could see how dead he was, how many years had been buried under. while he was on the ground, his handful of acres got whipped up into a city—a capital city, no less, a crossroads of industry and politics and people. when he followed wyandotte john over the rise that morning in 1819, the population was nine. it was him and his wife and them kids. population was eleven, cow and a horse and dog. now, it was up around a million, give or take, thanks to the natural increase of generations and the logic of capitalism and the march of the years. a million souls have born and died, a million stories have come and gone and left their traces, worn down into the soil, rained into the run, and run with it down into the wide waters of the white. pogue can’t keep his mind on vengeance no more. as he gets further south, tracing the trickling line of the run, the city leans higher and higher, odder and odder. the industrial plants and package stores and high+wire electrical lines and rattling chain fences and all the obscure equipment of the modern age, and the water was gone. well, he was still walking the route of the run, those boots following the old curves of it by ancient instinct. the run was gone. and what was here instead? this cathedral, this massive assemblage of red bricks and bright glass and parallel lines—”well, that’s the stadium,” a policeman told george pogue. “for football.” pogue didn’t know about football. he didn’t know what a stadium was. he didn’t know what a policeman was. he asked about this other thing standing upright and severe at the world’s dead center. “why, that’s monument circle. commemorates the civil war.” pogue didn’t know what the civil war was. strange things were happening now inside his head. vapors were shifting. pogue pulled his buckskin tighter around him. he always counted himself as brave, and he was gonna have to be particularly brave right now. all thoughts of wyandotte john were gone now—didn’t matter anymore. old dead pogue turned back, went north, went east, went faster, breathing hard, until he found what he was looking for: a tunnel mouth, gaping and dark and round—the spot where his trickling run disappeared

[verse 4]
he stared at it in silence, the dire junction a black hole swallowing his beloved. he stood and stared and, in time, a crowd gathered around him. hoosiers, midwesterners, sports fans, salesmen, truck drivers, kids, farmers and urban farmers and health insurance company executives. they gawked at him and wondered. funny+looking guy. funny beard and high boots and breeches, stinking of purgatory, standing at a tunnel mouth at the foot of a shrub+covered hillside. folks stared at him staring at the water where it disappeared beneath the city. n0body could explain to him how it happened, of course, why the city fathers had banished pogue’s run beneath the ground. n0body could explain anything to dead george. n0body present knew the story, how it just hadn’t fit with the vision of the expanding metropolis. there was a map and a pattern, and pogue’s dribbling little run had to be sent underground like a naughty schoolboy

[verse 5]
pogue took a step into the water itself, and the cold of it swamped up around his ankles, boots or no boots. he stood in the run and sighed. he felt philosophical. his namesake creek, it had been done in by time, that’s all. that’s the run of the world, isn’t it? every forest turns into a swamp, and every swamp is drained. every bone turns to rock, every rock to pulver. “that’s rivers for you,” thought george, wading a little deeper in. “that’s rivers, large and small. mighty at one bend, maybe, free and powerful or smooth and graceful, but in time, they get swallowed up by something larger or they just disappear right down into the ground”

[verse 6]
pogue walked right into the pipe, and everybody gasped. and then he was gone. they heard his footfalls getting softer as he was swallowed by the darkness. he was all by himself this time. he had no dog, he had no horse, he had no quarry and no guide. he was just following his run where it was sent. most of them folks went back to work, couple got in their cars and raced across downtown and waited where the tunnel ended. the graffiti splattered out pipe into the white. they sat and waited and waited for pogue to come on out. but he never did again

- field works lyrics

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