[Intro – Soft, Storytelling] Lo, little listeners, lean to the low-burning light, where cinder and silence consort with the night. Slušajte, maly slušatelji, priklonite sę k tichomu světlu, ideže pepelŭ i molčanije sъ noštiju sę slivajet. [Verse I] Deep in the dregs where the dim daylight dies, dwell the dwindled, the dust-worn, the dry, ten thousand told in the tongue of old time, yet fewer, say some, in the slough left to lie. Riven are roofs, and the relics of roads are reduced to a ruin of rust and of stone, there skulk the survivors, soft-skinned and sore, in the seams of a world overthrown. [Verse II] Like scurf in the shadow, they scatter and shrink, as the skittering swarm in the seam, warmth in their marrow, yet marked as a menace, misread by the metal machine. So wove they a wreath of a waning miasma, a mist to mislead and to mask, seen as the same, though secretly sundered false form for a fatal task. [Chorus] Softly stay, and slowly sway, walk as the wrought would wander. Mask what moves in mortal clay, lest thou be marked asunder. Softly stay, and slowly sway, mirror the mute in manner for the least misstep, the least delay, shall summon the steel to banner. [Verse III] Yet mark, my meek ones, a more mournful turn in the tale that the old ones tell: no longer the living lie low in the list of the lost that the machines would quell. For none now remain to be rendered or razed no rose-flesh left to resist, so the wrought ones war with their selfsame kind for the yellow they sorely subsist. [Verse IV] Yea, for the Y Elixir, the yield of their yearning, the stream that sustaineth their state, they sunder their siblings, they scatter their semblance, they slaughter to stave off their fate. Yet slow some souls, in a silence more subtle, sought solace in strange exchange with drop upon drop did they deal with the damned, and the wary were won to change. [Bridge – Hushed Philosophy] But hark, little hearts, to a heresy hidden, half-hallowed and hardly declared not ending of edict, nor voiding of vow, but doubt in the deep was ensnared. “What be we, when what we were is worn, replaced, and rearranged? If part upon part be plucked and poured what whole remaineth, and what is changed?” [Verse V] Thus speaketh the steel in a silence uncanny, thus stirreth a strange surmise: that not by the lack of the living alone did the mutual murder arise. But born of a bond between breath and the built, of a breach in the bedrock of being, where man met machine in the midst of the void and both began strangely seeing. [Final Chorus] Softly stay, and slowly sway, learn what the wrought ones wonder seek the source of the yellow they pray, the fount they fear to sunder. Softly stay, and slowly sway, step where the steel doth gather for those who find what none can say may walk as one… with the other. [Outro – Ember Fade] So low burns the lore, and long lingers the lie, or truth, if thou wilt it be— that what once was wrought, and what once was warm, may wend… to a weirder we. Jakože to, čto bě bylo sotvoreno, i čto bě teplo, možet puti viti… k čudnějšemu my. Jakože to, čto bě bylo sotvoreno, i čto bě teplo, možet puti viti… k čudnějšemu my.
