The Thermal Threshold (Enceladus)

Lyrics

[Intro]

Enceladus, under Etna's weight,
your breath at dawn, sulfur sharp in the air.

[Verse 1]
I feel you stirring, giant of the deep,
buried since Hesiod's words in 700 BCE,
under layers of Sicilian stone,
your thermal threshold crossed at 1000 degrees Celsius.
Neurons fire like your volcanic vents,
pain signals racing up the spine,
addressing you, my buried rage,
the heat that builds without release.

[Chorus]
Oh, Enceladus, your groans echo in my cortex,
the gradient of tolerance wearing thin,
like Buddhist equanimity facing the flame,
hold the burn, let it pass through.
Sulfur stench in the morning light,
ash clouds over olive groves charred black.

[Verse 2]
Virgil wrote of your fiery breath in 19 BCE,
Aeneid lines marking your prison,
now in my mind's Etna crater,
the osmotic pull of memories erupting.
Addressing this tool of endurance,
the neural gate that holds back the lava flow,
feel the tremble, the low rumble underfoot,
Enceladus, you shift every hundred years,
as Pitrè noted in 1870 folklore.

[Bridge]

The missing voices, shepherds fleeing in 500 BCE,
their screams lost to the record,
your pain unvoiced, only Olympian tales remain.
But here, intimate, I speak to the heat within,
the threshold where calm meets catastrophe.

[Chorus]
Oh, Enceladus, your groans echo in my cortex,
the gradient of tolerance wearing thin,
like Buddhist equanimity facing the flame,
hold the burn, let it pass through.
Sulfur stench in the morning light,
ash clouds over olive groves charred black.

[Verse 3]
The acrid burn in my nostrils,
the ground's guttural hum through bare soles,
extreme heat forging new paths in the brain,
like kintsugi veins mending the break.
Enceladus, loved destroyer,
your unrest my mindfulness practice,
enduring the improbable glow beneath.

[Outro]

Rest now, under Etna's dawn,
thermal threshold steady, for a moment.