Second Crime Against Philosophy

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
Your hands sorting stone from seed from bone,
each specimen a world unfolding under lamplight—
the way your fingers traced the gill-slits,
mapped the chambers of the heart as if reading
a letter written in muscle and valve.
Your mind built cathedrals from categories,
arranged what seemed like chaos into orders,
families, genera, species—the long branching tree
where nothing lived alone.

[Chorus]
You taught the world to *look*—
really look—at the particular,
the feathered, the scaled, the breathing thing
right in front of your eyes.
Your gaze was the first synapse firing:
light hitting the retina, then *meaning*.
You made us see we were part of the same web,
all of us climbing the same trunk.

[Verse 2]
Your pupils dilated with each new species,
your cortex remapping constantly—
new knowledge carved fresh pathways through the tissue,
axons branching like roots reaching for water.
You didn't theorize from marble halls alone;
you waded, you dissected, your hands
performed the work your mind demanded.
Long-term potentiation: each observation
strengthened into certainty, synapse holding fast
what you'd seen once and seen true.

[Chorus]
You taught the world to *look*—
really look—at the particular,
the feathered, the scaled, the breathing thing
right in front of your eyes.
Your gaze was the first synapse firing:
light hitting the retina, then *meaning*.
You made us see we were part of the same web,
all of us climbing the same trunk.

[Bridge]
Your hands never stopped moving—
turning over specimens like sacred relics,
because *they were*. Every creature
a mirror, a proof. The mirror neurons firing
when you watched a creature move,
your own neurons dancing the same dance—
empathy encoded in the motor cortex,
recognition burning through the body.

[Outro]
Your hands still rest on the bench,
sorting light from shadow,
order from the infinite sprawl—
and we're all still reaching
for the next stone, the next revelation,
the next particular beauty
you taught us how to hold.