Briar Rose

Lyrics

[Intro]
(glass-harmonica and strings, time held very still)

[Verse 1]
Twelve golden plates for twelve wise women, but the thirteenth came uninvited,
and she paid the slight with a spindle-prick and a hundred years benighted.
The last one softened death to sleep, but the curse still found its day —
one wandering girl, one dusty tower, one spindle in the way.

[Chorus]
And the whole court fell where the whole court stood — the cook mid-swing, the flame mid-sway,
the fly asleep on the kitchen wall, the whole world holding its stay.
Consciousness is a fragile flame the brain-stem barely keeps —
and a kingdom learned in a single prick how close we live to sleep.

[Verse 2]
The hedge grew up all thorn and grief and it swallowed the reckless and bold,
and suitor after suitor died in the briars, stiff and cold.
But time is the only key that fits, and the hundredth spring came round,
and the thorns broke into roses white for the one the hour had found.

[Bridge]
(the glass tones lift, waking)
He crossed a court of sleeping stone to a tower of sleeping breath,
and the moment leaned, and the spell let go, and the sleep let go of death.

[Outro]
The spit began to turn again and the fly buzzed off the sill...
a hundred years is a single blink to the part of us that's still.