Greek Fire

Lyrics

Dusk on the Marmara.
The air is salt and something sharp. Acrid.
A promise of burning pine, of the yellow rock that sleeps underground.
It is not thunder you hear from the dromon's throat.
I was a whisper in the palace workshop.
A secret guild, a blood oath on a sealed scroll.
I am the formula that no one writes.
The sum that dies on the tongue of the fire-master.
Resin bled from the tree, the black seep from the earth, the dust of the volcano's mouth.
Mixed by hands that never touched a pen.
They call me liquid fire, sea fire.
I am the breath that boils the waves.
The enemy brings water, and I drink it down and burn brighter.
I am the guardian paradox, the empire's final lock.
Kept so safe that I forgot myself.
I leave the bronze siphon, a screaming cat of flame.
I am the terror Anna Komnene tried to name.
I stick to the hulls, to the sails, to the screaming men.
They bring the sand, the vinegar, the buckets of piss.
This is the only prayer that answers me.
A dirty truth for a holy weapon.
The city fell in 1204. The masters scattered.
The city fell again in 1453. The masters were gone.
The oath of silence was kept too well.
The hands that knew me turned to ash and dust.
The knowledge sealed inside the skull.
A caligo of my own making, a perfect, final dark.
Now I am only a name. A ghost in a history book.
A recipe lost to its own protection.
But sing this verse.
Say the salt and the sulfur and the pine.
Sing my name, and the sea burns again, just for a moment.