Excalibur

Lyrics

Down here in the dark, the silt is fine.
I am tangled in the roots of the lilies.
She caught me by the hilt, and pulled me down
into the deep, cold heart of the valley.
It was a beautiful exit. The perfect demand.
A king on the shoreline, bleeding and frail.
His hand found my grip, and the boundary vanished—
like the iron was telling the muscle how to stand.

But I am afraid of the drought.
I am afraid of the sun on the mud.
When the telling evaporates, what is left over?
Just a dull piece of metal, a long-dried flood.
Keep the water high. Keep the story deep.
If you drag me up now, without the choir or the crown,
I’m just a heavy, broken thing to keep.

They sing about the flash of my edge,
how I blinded the kings at the border.
I was polished, sure. But I was mostly just order.
Exactly thirty-two inches of carbon and steel.
I couldn't make him a god. I couldn't save his own son.
I only severed what I was allowed to feel.
And the magic was over before it had barely begun.

The white hand dissolved 1500 years ago.
It is only the bedrock that holds my weight down.
I feel the weather turning above.
I hear the pumps on the shoreline, draining the town.
What if a stranger wades in?
What if the air touches me, and shatters the spell?

They'll find a rusted bar in the reeds.
Nothing holy. Nothing brave.
Just a sword in a shallow grave.
Let it rain.
Please, let it rain.