When your heart grows heavy, and your chest feels cold inside Come stand before the [Hermitage] as twilight turns to night Where without bread or water, forgotten and alone The Atlases hold up the sky on hands of weathered stone
To bear its heavy burden does not look an easy task Their backs are straining, muscles taut, [their faces bear pain's mask] Their work is more important, though, than any other toil For if anyone should weaken, the sky will surely fall.
Widows in darkness cry out as all the fields burn O'ershadowed by the mushroom cloud that [means] the end for Earth Meanwhile the sky with every year gets heavier to bear It rattles from the noise of rockets in the air
They stand there, fine handsome lads carved out of stone's grain Placed there on duty, long ago; and no replacements came The daylight now seems dull to them, they cannot sleep at night Their features marred and cracked by [straying shells of wars]
They stand there through the ages, [in the thick of it] Not gods, but merely humans, [ones used to hard work] [Our hope can still be alive for as long as] The Atlases hold up the sky on hands of weathered stone