The Ghost in the Pen

The room is breathing. The clock is ticking. Someone is talking. Nobody knows who's speaking. There’s an old man sitting underneath the light A paper on the table and a pen held tight His eyes are somewhere far beyond the room While somebody is whispering what he should do The hand still moves The fingers still know How to make a mark How to make the ink flow But the mind behind the movement Has wandered somewhere else And nobody in the room Is asking for himself The paper doesn't ask questions The ink doesn't hesitate A signature looks perfectly alive Even when the meaning comes too late There’s a ghost inside the pen And somebody taught it how to write The hand belongs to yesterday But the signature comes tonight There’s a ghost inside the pen And nobody asks its name The body signs, the paper smiles And nothing stays the same The numbers move across the page Like soldiers in a line Nobody knows who moved them there But somehow they're assigned A door closes softly A voice disappears A question gets forgotten Before it reaches anyone's ears Someone says, “It's nothing.” Someone says, “It's care.” Someone says, “He understands.” But nobody asks him there. The paper doesn't have a memory The ink cannot feel regret And once the signature is written It's very hard to ask who wrote it There’s a ghost inside the pen And somebody taught it how to write The hand belongs to yesterday But the signature comes tonight There’s a ghost inside the pen And nobody asks its name The body signs, the paper smiles And nothing stays the same A photograph remembers What the living can't recall A childhood in a hallway A voice behind the wall Names become shadows Faces lose their place The past comes back in fragments But nobody knows the date And somewhere in the silence A daughter knows the sound Of a man who once could answer Now searching for the ground Who speaks When the voice is gone? Who chooses When the choice is gone? Who owns the words When memory disappears? Who holds the pen When nobody is listening? Who is signing? There’s a ghost inside the pen And somebody taught it how to write The hand belongs to yesterday But the signature comes tonight There’s a ghost inside the pen And nobody asks its name The body signs, the paper smiles And nothing stays the same You can lock away the papers You can hide them from the light But a signature can't tell you If the soul was there that night The room is breathing. The clock is ticking. The pen is moving. Someone is missing. Someone is missing...