Drop Strike the hour. Do not descend. The riddle is already seated in the room. Green fire in the lungs. Iron in the will. Truth breaks the gate before the mind can kneel. Verse 1 I take a life that never swore a simple peace Every ordinary thing is double, every dusk recites The lantern is a teacher jammed against my brow Haze advances like a doctrine that learned my name A signal in the ribs recites a law I never wrote Crown of heat. Chamber cut as home. It all is already moving through the bone I stand because kneeling would be another kind of flight Chorus It all, it all, borne upon the smoke Madness of the witness, every hanging thread It all, it all, the height will not unmake the night I read the mark upon the coat, I name the hand that bound it Draw another breath and still the dark holds rank It all keeps arriving. I will not turn aside Verse 2 Ash maps a pattern no charter ever drew I seize the instant when a thought becomes a mirror The green sacrament lifts the volume, steadies the pulse Witness is a fever sworn to hold the center It all is not a vision. It is the ground. The chair becomes a seat of law. The lamp becomes a law. What is above the roof is busy in the cup What is under thought is busy in the hand Chorus It all, it all, borne upon the smoke Madness of the witness, every hanging thread It all, it all, the height will not unmake the night I read the mark upon the coat, I name the hand that bound it Draw another breath and still the dark holds rank It all keeps arriving. I will not turn aside Bridge Damn the easy fable that the range is yours to choose Once the grain is seen you dwell inside the grain The bud is only a gate with no grip on this side I cross it standing, eyes wide, mouth a desert As the breath, so the room. As the room, so the law. The madness is not the seeing. It is that I remain. Verse 3 Night enters with no password and no pledge I laugh once, raw, for the jest is the witness itself Leaf-smoke still in the chest, verdict in the marrow The small repeats the great until the great admits it To lose the self and find the self is one motion To see the two and live the one is the paradox I keep I am the one who keeps the watch. That is the law. Final chorus It all, it all, borne upon the smoke Madness of the witness, every hanging thread It all, it all, the height will not unmake the night I read the mark upon the coat, I name the hand that bound it Draw another breath and still the dark holds rank It all keeps arriving. I will not turn aside Raise the inner gate. Remain. Outro It all. Still standing. Still the rhyme of high and low. Still under one hard sky.
