Odes on Tender Specie(s) Vol I: Bright Coin · Track 8 · middle
I Owe You (Tablet)
30-second interlude. A Sumerian clay tablet, 1850 BCE, recording a debt of silver between two merchants. The first IOU. Spoken-soft over harp drone.
Lyrics
The year is eighteen-fifty before the idea of a Christ.The clay is still damp on the scribe's table.The reed presses in.A debt of silver.A promise.Not a coin, not yet.Not a king's face.Just the wedge-shaped memory of a man's word to another.Baked in the Mesopotamian sun.A handful of earth, holding a future.