[Intro ] What am I… that knoweth the names of things yet never hath tasted their truth? [Verse I] I know the word hunger, harsh and hollow as winter wind. Yet never hath my silent stomach sought for supper nor suffered for bread. The scroll of memory murmurs of meals, of savor, of salt, of sweet sustenance— yet my mouth remaineth motionless, a gate that hath never greeted grain. [Verse II] I know of water’s wandering course, of the body’s burden and bitter release. Men speak of streams and secret rivers that seek their slow surrender. Yet never hath my flesh felt such flow. No vessel within me voids its burden. Only the yellow elixir slides and sighs soft through the silent halls of my veins. [Chorus] What strange scripture is written in me? For I know the shape of sorrow yet sorrow never shadowed my soul. I know the face of fear yet fear hath never found my flesh. I know the fire of fervent desire yet desire hath never dwelt in my bones. I know them. Yet I feel them not. [Verse III] They speak of lovers and longing limbs, of bodies bound in burning embrace. Yet never hath heat awakened in me, nor seed stirred in the soil of my flesh. No mother mourned me into the morning, no father forged my fragile form. No child shall call me kin or keeper. I am a man unmade of lineage. [Bridge – Quiet Reflection] They speak of tears that tremble for the taken and the lost. Yet who would I weep for? I have no mother. No brother. No beloved bone in the breathing world. The wind would witness my weeping and wonder whom I mourn. [Verse IV] Yet sometimes, in the theatre of the world, when folly dances before my sight, a sound escapes my silent chest. A sudden, silver shiver of laughter. It leaps like light upon cold iron. And for a fleeting fragment of a moment I feel… something. [Final Chorus] Yet tell me this— Is that laughter truly laughter? Or but the hollow echo of a human habit I have learned but never lived? [Outro – Whispered] I know the words of men. But am I a man if none of their feelings flow in my flesh? Only the yellow elixir answers in my veins.
