The Foundation (Fundament)

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
In the Gloucestershire monastery, winter 1398,
John Trevisa bends over the oak desk,
his quill scratching vellum, the inkhorn
spilling its iron gall scent into the chill air.
Fundamentum, he writes, the base that holds
the cathedral's stones, laid deep in earth.
But then, the shift, to the body's own ground,
the nether ende, as he calls it, of man or woman.

[Chorus]
Fundament, my quiet anchor,
you who underpin the arches and the flesh,
in Latin's careful script, you bind the unseen.
Reverend Goss whispers you once each sermon,
on May 12th last year, in the wooden pews,
the congregation stirs, feels the weight below.

[Verse 2]
The scriptorium at 9 PM, tallow candle flickering,
smoke curling like Saturn's influence, they said,
governing the lower realms, the fundament's health.
Trevisa, cleric and translator, c. 1342 to 1402,
from Bartholomaeus Anglicus's encyclopedia,
De Proprietatibus Rerum, page after brittle page.
I hold you now, this word, like a worn scribe's knife,
sharpening the quill for truths we barely speak.

[Bridge]
Oh, fundament, foundation of cathedrals and of us,
in the cold 10 degrees, hands stiff on the desk,
you remind me of the unnamed midwives,
their oral lore lost to the gaps in vellum.

[Verse 3]
British Library MS Additional 27944,
15th-century copy, your echoes preserved,
yet the peasants' tongues, how they twisted you,
absent from the records, a silence in the stone.
Reverend uses you sparingly, in his pulpit voice,
addressing the body as temple, the base as sacred.

[Chorus]
Fundament, my quiet anchor,
you who underpin the arches and the flesh,
in Latin's careful script, you bind the unseen.
Reverend Goss whispers you once each sermon,
on May 12th last year, in the wooden pews,
the congregation stirs, feels the weight below.

[Outro]
Fundament, you hold us still.