**The False Azure** [Spoken, distant, over a slow heartbeat pulse and drifting organ] I was the shadow of the bird that flew… or I was the glass. I have never been sure which. [Verse — slow, floating, Rhodes and brushed cymbals] A waxwing hit the window at the turning of the light It saw a sky that wasn't there and gave itself to flight And I have lived my whole life in that false and painted blue Chasing something on the glass that looked a lot like you [Verse] There's a poem someone's writing in a house across the lawn And every line he sets to rest, I read myself upon He never wrote my kingdom, but I know it's hidden there In the space between his letters, in the pale and borrowed air [Chorus — swelling, layered vocal, first slide guitar] So tell me which one's breathing and which one's just the shade Which one wore the crown he dreamed and which one's crown was made Somewhere north of memory there's a country no one's seen And I am both the exile and the king who's never been [Instrumental — long slide guitar, then saxophone entering low] [Verse — quieter] They gave me a reflection and they told me it was mine A face that answers to a name, a self drawn line by line But turn me in the water and the picture comes apart There's a stranger doing all my grieving, wearing all my heart [Spoken bridge, layered whispers, panned wide] And which of us is speaking now — the reader or the read? The one who lived the poem, or the one who lived instead? There was a distant country… there was a mirror… there was a shot… And I cannot tell you if I was the man, or just the thought. [Chorus — fullest, choir of doubles, plate reverb blooming] So tell me which one's breathing and which one's just the shade Which one wore the crown he dreamed and which one's crown was made Somewhere north of memory there's a country no one's seen And I am both the exile and the king who's never been [Outro — saxophone fading, heartbeat returning, everything dissolving] The poem stops at a line that never came The glass is cold, the sky was never there And somewhere in the false and painted blue A waxwing and a shadow disappear
