Hartsfield-Jackson: Global Pulse

Lyrics

[Intro]I can feel you breathing.Even from miles away, on the Perimeter.A low hum in the floorboards of the city.A promise in the gray dawn, written in jet trails.[Verse 1]You were born on a racetrack, an empty oval of clay.Asa Candler's 287 acres, leased for a dollar a year.Nineteen twenty-five.Just a grass strip they called Candler Field.I imagine the smell of fuel on the summer grass,The first Florida Airways mail plane lifting off,Stirring red dust.A fragile idea with canvas wings.[Chorus]You are the new Terminus.Not of iron rails, but of currents of air.The concrete heart, the global pulse.Maynard Jackson's billion-dollar baby,Breathing in, breathing out.London, Seoul, Johannesburg, and home.A ceaseless river of souls.You never, ever sleep.[Verse 2]Hartsfield saw the future in the sky over the South.He cleared the shantytowns to make way for it.But Jackson... he built the cathedral for the world.Nineteen eighty.The Midfield Terminal opened like a promise kept.All that new carpet and gleaming glass,So vast you could get lost in the sheer scale of it.From a muddy field to the busiest place on this Earth.Since ninety-eight, you've held the title, unbroken.[Chorus]You are the new Terminus.Not of iron rails, but of currents of air.The concrete heart, the global pulse.Maynard Jackson's billion-dollar baby,Breathing in, breathing out.London, Seoul, Johannesburg, and home.A ceaseless river of souls.You never, ever sleep.[Bridge]Down below, the Plane Train, your silent, electric artery.Connecting the concourses like synapses in a great mind.Up in the glass tower, they watch the sky,A complex ballet of arrivals and landings.From Concourse E, the whole world spills out.And the whole city spills into the world.A gateway made of light, and pressure, and goodbye.[Outro]I still feel you breathing.The constant takeoff roar, shaking the windows.The landing gear's soft hydraulic complaint.You are the city's true engine.The pulse against my ear, even in sleep.Terminus.