The Little Kingdom

[Куплет 1] We took the goat path past the water tank With paper maps and a pocketknife Cal mercer knew where the lizards hid And june could name every ridge in sight We built a fort from fallen branches Marked our kingdom with a crooked sign By supper, hills had turned to islands And every trail was a new design [Алдынғы қайырма] I still can find those crooked borders In the colors waiting on my hand [Қайырма] I paint the hillside, gold and green The little kingdom in between Those afternoons gave me a way To look twice at an ordinary day And when the colors start to run I see us racing toward the sun The world was wide, the rules were few I learned to make a world from what we knew [Куплет 2] Now i set my easel near the switchback Where the scrub oak leans above the road A hawk turns slow above the canyon And the dry grass keeps its copper glow I hear june calling from the creek bed Cal's old compass clicking in his palm We didn't know we were collecting All the shapes that later kept me calm [Алдынғы қайырма] The same long slope, the same clear weather A thousand small discoveries remain [Қайырма] I paint the hillside, gold and green The little kingdom in between Those afternoons gave me a way To look twice at an ordinary day And when the colors start to run I see us racing toward the sun The world was wide, the rules were few I learned to make a world from what we knew [Көпір] Some folks ask what made me choose this life I say, “we had a map we made ourselves” A creek for a border, a stone for a crown And a whole bright country climbing up the hill [Final chorus] I paint the hillside, gold and green The little kingdom in between Those afternoons still show the way To look twice at an ordinary day And when the colors start to run I see us racing toward the sun The world was wide, the rules were few I learned to make a world from what we knew [Аутро] Cal mercer, june, that winding trail Still traveling with me in every scale