Odes to Joy

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Canonical) · Track 548 · middle

The Chart Reads Like a Joke the Body Doesn't Get

Adrian Carton de Wiart

Lyrics

**Central Image:** The voluntary amputation of his own left hand—a soldier choosing his own body's breaking point, then walking back into war.

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[Verse 1]
You took the saw to your own wrist
when the infection bloomed like fever-dream,
no anaesthetic but your cortex firing
predictive coding—already knowing
the phantom limb would ghost your palm
before the blade did. You chose the cut.
Then you dressed. Then you returned.

[Chorus]
Your body was a instrument you played
until the strings snapped,
then you rewired the whole cathedral,
and your fingers still remember dancing
on a rifle's trigger—
synaptic plasticity rewriting every nerve,
long-term potentiation burning new pathways
through the dark.

[Verse 2]
They said the eye was next—shrapnel
remapping your visual cortex into blindness,
but you'd already learned the trick:
the brain rewrites itself when flesh won't hold.
Your mirror neurons fired for every man
who watched you walk back in,
one-eyed, one-handed, grinning,
and they learned how to break open too.

[Chorus]
Your body was an instrument you played
until the strings snapped,
then you rewired the whole cathedral,
and your fingers still remember dancing
on a rifle's trigger—
neurogenesis blooming in the dark,
axons branching where the wound was,
new strength threading where you bled.

[Bridge]
You didn't pray for healing.
You prayed for *more*.
Your proprioception remapped itself—
the ghost of your hand still reaching
for what needed doing,
and doing it.

[Outro]
One eye. One hand. Ten campaigns.
The saw-mark became a signature,
and you signed your name in scars
the whole world couldn't ignore.
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