"This you know: the years travel fast, and time after time I done the tell. But this ain't onebody's tell. It's the tell of us all, and you've got to listen it and to 'member, 'cause what you hears today you got to tell the newborn tomorrow. I's looking behind us now into history back. I sees those of us who got the luck and started the haul for home, and I 'members how it led us here and how we was heartful 'cause we seen what there once was. One look and we knewed we'd got it straight. Those what had gone before had the knowing and the doing of things beyond our reckoning — even beyond our dreaming. Time counts and keeps counting, and we knows now: finding the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride, but that's our track. We got to travel it, and there ain't nobody knows where it's gonna lead. Still and all, every night we does the tell so that we 'member who we was and where we came from. But most of all we 'members the man who finded us, him that came to salvage. And we lights the city, not just for him, but for all of them that are still out there. 'Cause we knows there'll come a night when they sees the distant light and they'll be coming home."