Where is justice?

INTRO
O hush, O hush, the valley holds its breath,
A thousand stones keep their secrets still.
I lift my voice like smoke toward Ararat,
And wait for answering thunder, wait for will.

ARIA 1
O mother, who tills the apricot earth with grief,
Your hands are maps of summers gone to rust;
Your lullabies were carved in granite relief,
Your tears were given to the river, given to the dust.
Speak—where does mercy hide its face?
Where does the scale find the perfect place?

CHORUS
Where is justice? — cry the bells that never fall silent,
Where is justice? — ring, stone bell, break the silence wide.
Where is justice? — in the echo, in the plaintive,
Where is justice? — We ask the mountains and the tide.

RECITATIVE
The church doors stand with their shadows turned to ash,
The cross-stones wear their centuries like crowns;
We gather names like seeds to scatter in the dark,
Each syllable is a torch when memory drowns.

ARIA 2
O child of exodus with a photograph for a mother,
You carry rooms inside the hollows of your chest;
A language folded soft as prayer beneath your collar,
A song of homeland stitched and hidden in your dress.
Tell me—who will answer for the absent light?
Who will place the ledger’s wrongs to right?

BRIDGE
Ararat stands witness with its white and patient crown,
It keeps the map of every exile’s way;
The winds confess in tongues of salt the things now sown,
And bells remember every lost and betrayed day.
Oh sky, be jury—oh earth, be judge—declare!
Let nothing of this mourning pass to thin despair.

BREAKDOWN
Mother, I remember bread, the warmth of noon.
Father, I remember songs that filled the room.
Brother, I remember leaving at the moon.
We remember—let the memory become a boom.

OUTRO
If justice sleeps, we shall be its rousing drum,
If justice wanders, we will teach its feet to roam.
We are the keepers of the light when nights are numb,
We build from old lament a fierce, unyielding home.
And though the bell may crack and still the questions roam,
We hold this oath: until the last stone sings
Where is justice?
We will not let it go.
We will not... let it go....