What the Loudest Voice Can't Say

Lyrics

I found your book where the air gives out.
A seven-thousander in the Karakoram.
No flag, just this.
Your other voice.

They called you Quiet Quinn.
I can see you.
Eight a.m. on a Tuesday, frost on the cobblestones.
The tricorn hat casting a shadow.
That bell in your hand, a legal weight.
You had to shout the market rates, the royal news, the lost dog.
Your voice, a public tool, cracking in the cold.
Oyez, Oyez, Oyez.

But the loudest voice in the square
Carried the quietest words up here.
Every stolen thing, every shadow you owned,
Written in ink on a throne of stone.
What can the loudest voice... never say?

The cover smells of damp wool.
The pages are stiff with ice.
I can just make out the script.
'He said...' 'I was...' 'It happened...'
The unspeakable things, given a line, a page.
Not for the market square, not for the crown.
Just for the wind that sounds like a distant crowd.
Your real proclamations.

Because the loudest voice in the square
Carried the quietest words up here.
Every stolen thing, every shadow you owned,
Written in ink on a throne of stone.
What can the loudest voice... never say?

Did you climb to escape the ringing?
Did you think the altitude would silence the memory?
You carried every pound of it.
Every whispered name, every shame.
You brought the shadow to the brightest, coldest sun.
A proclamation to no one.
The only announcement that mattered.

Quiet Quinn.
I hear you now.
The bell is gone.
Only the pages turn.
What couldn't you say?