Drachma's Owl

Lyrics

[Intro]
Seventeen-point-two grams of silver.
Cool against my skin.
A weight from a world I can only read about.
ΑΘΕ. The letters for Athens.

[Verse 1]
They pulled you from the dark of the Laurion mines.
The year Themistocles saw the ships in the silver.
Four-eighty-three. A new vein.
A new treasury.
The hammer fell, the die bit deep.
On one side, the goddess in her helmet.
Ready for war, or for wisdom.

[Chorus]
But on the other side, it was you.
Little owl. Athene Noctua.
Your body a crescent moon, your eyes wide circles.
What did it mean?
To stamp the bird of vigilance on the price of a thing?
To make insight the currency of the world’s first argument?

[Verse 2]
Your brothers and sisters paid for the stones of the Parthenon.
You were counted out for oars, for wine, for a vote.
You passed from a soldier to a merchant to a philosopher in the dust of the Agora.
A flash of silver in the Mediterranean sun.
They called you glaukes.
Owls.
"How many owls for that length of linen?"

[Chorus]
And on the other side, it was you.
Little owl. Athene Noctua.
Your body a crescent moon, your eyes wide circles.
What did it mean?
To stamp the bird of vigilance on the price of a thing?
To make insight the currency of the world’s first argument?

[Bridge]
Did you know you were funding a question?
An experiment in shared power.
A democracy bought with silver wisdom.
The olive sprig beside your head, a promise of peace.
Even as you paid for the ships.
The contradiction held in a single, solid piece.

[Outro]
Two and a half thousand years.
The silver has tarnished.
The edges are worn from so many hands.
But your eyes are still wide.
Still looking.
As if you just saw something in the dark.