[Intro]
[Instrumental: twelve-string guitar plays the motif slowly while cello sustains the spaces between notes.]

The blindfold lies beside the chair,
The eagle feels the colder air.
The patchwork flag is damp with rain;
No song can make it clean again.

[Verse 1]
[Baritone]

Across the sea, the cameras wait
To see which promise meets its date.
The nations heard the freedom claim,
Then watched the prison, bomb and flame.
A sermon travels fast and far;
So does the invoice of a war.
No beacon shines because it says
That light belongs to it alone.

[Pre-Chorus]
[Female mezzo]

Do not wake the world with steel.
Wake it with the harms you heal.
Do not teach what you evade.
Live the law your speeches made.

[Chorus]
[Both]

America, wake the world—
Not with missiles, not with gold.
Wake it by the truth unfurled,
By the names you left untold.
Let the patchwork flag be curled
Round no master—wake the world.

[Verse 2]
[Female mezzo]

Repair is slower than a cheer;
It asks who pays and who can hear.
A treaty honored, school restored,
A worker welcomed to the board.
A ballot counted, prison closed,
A stolen record re-exposed.
No single act redeems the whole;
The daily measure proves the soul.

[Pre-Chorus]

[Both]
The world has heard the anthem’s claim;
Now let the practice match the name.
No empire wakes a world made free—
Only common work can turn the key.

[Chorus]

[Both]
America, wake the world—
Not with missiles, not with gold.
Wake it by the truth unfurled,
By the names you left untold.
Let the patchwork flag be curled
Round no master—wake the world.

[Interlude]
[Cello revisits the boarding-school bell melody; guitar answers with the furnace rhythm, then both settle into the border cadence.]

[Bridge]
[Call and Response]

[Baritone]
What if the throne returns at night?
[Female mezzo]
Then morning must renew the fight.
[Baritone]
What if the lie regains the square?
[Female mezzo]
Then truth must organize from there.
[Both]
Freedom is not what nations are;
It is the work that answers harm.

[Break]
[Choir]

No country innocent.
No people pure.
No justice automatic.
No freedom secure.
No final awakening.
No permanent dawn.
Only the choice
To keep choosing on.

[Buildup]
[Ensemble]

Bring the treaty.
Bring the thread.
Bring the names beside the dead.
Bring the ballot.
Bring the bread.
Bring the words the children kept.
Bring no crown.
Bring no sword.
Bring the work behind the word.

[Final Chorus]
[Choir and both leads]

America, wake the world—
Not with missiles, not with gold.
Wake it by the truth unfurled,
By the names you left untold.
Let the patchwork flag be curled
Round no master—wake the world.

[Coda]
[Both]

Not “great again,” but just at last;
Not free of history—free to face the past.

[Instrumental]
[The ensemble performs a long coda joining all forms of the three-note motif without a triumphant resolution.]

[Outro]
[Both]

The eagle sees.
The table waits.
The flag is many.
The morning breaks.

America, wake the world—
Or be the warning
The world remembers.
