The Boy's Clothes (Joan of Arc)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You began hearing voices at thirteen —
Michael, Catherine, Margaret,
the saints the village priest
had made familiar
through stained glass and prayer —
and the voices said specific things:
lift the siege,
crown the king,
put on the clothes
the kingdom expects
a kingdom expects
its savior to wear
and the voices did not negotiate
with the peasant girl's uncertainty
the voices had a schedule

[Verse 2]
You put on the plate
and the chain mail
and the boy's clothes underneath —
hose, tunic, short hair —
and the plate smelled like the forge
and the specific cold
of a body of metal
never shaped before
for a body this small
and the weight of the armor
was the weight of every soldier
who had worn one before you
and whose spirits
were trying to teach you
how to carry it
by adding themselves to the burden

[Chorus]
You lifted the siege in nine days
and escorted the king to his coronation
and the coronation
was the evidence the voices had promised:
the things they said would happen
happened on the schedule they specified
and the schedule was not a prophecy
it was an appointment
and you kept the appointment
wearing the clothes
a kingdom had told you to wear
and a church would later
burn you for wearing
and the church that lit the stake
was the same church
that had made you hear the saints
in the first place
which is the definition of bureaucracy

[Outro]
They burned you at nineteen in Rouen
and the fire smelled like green wood
and horsehair
and the specific silence
of a city that had agreed to watch
They burned you three times
to make sure
and the ashes went into the Seine
because a country
that cannot keep a saint alive
will at least refuse to bury one
Five hundred years later
they declared you a saint
and the declaration
was the only verdict
history ever overturned
by waiting