[Intro — Deep, ethereal, and icy voice, sustained by distant violin chords] Beneath the relentless rhythm of regulated hours, Silence asserts itself, the soul is put to death... [Verse 1] Chalk benches frozen in an immutable decree, Where they teach you a world with indelible lines. Breaking the ranks too early would make the road unstable, Thinking too hard hurts minds that are docile and tables. They measure your blood by the weight of a note, Never the great secret that beats deep inside. School is a forge where the herd is all penned, Trained to obey the rhythm talents intend. Between the fold of the mold and solitary exile, They teach you to bow your spine before dawn's light. Disappearing in silence or pleasing the age, Such is the mute law that seals your stage. [Chorus] Metro, dust of hours, and locks on the mouth, Even your ink-stained cries mirror their reproof. They grant you a voice just to take it right back, An illusion of offering where destinies crack. A cheap little right at the service of numbers, A shadow inside the urn prolonging the slumbers. You think you carry the world in the curve of your eye, Yet you're only an echo where prison stones lie. [Verse 2] Selling by drops the very beats of your age, To buy back days imprisoned by night. A wage is a trap in a noble-looking guise, Where the harder you strive, the more existence dies. The dice are eternal upon the green table, Others are born at the peak, you left out in the cold. They tax even the wind that cradles your poor, miserable Crossing through shadows right past every tomb door. The horizon of the end—a promise of smoke— Recedes as the body is stripped to the bone, And your breath wears away building armies to cloak A marble empire where your shadow is thrown. [Verse 3] When weariness has eaten the weave of your veins, And time fades away at the threshold of great winters, They throw you to oblivion with no tears and no pains, A simple worn cog returned to the universe in splinters. Silent retirement, isolation without intoxication, After giving the blood from your skeleton's station. The broken body collapses in utter distress, As if your quiet disappearance suits their press. [Outro — Solo voice, carried by a final sigh of strings] They never stole your freedom from you... They just taught you to believe you already had it.
