Zweihander

Lyrics

Seventy inches from pommel to tip.
They stare through the glass at the width of the cross.
They whisper of giants, they trace my long grip,
And treat me like something a glacier tossed.
They don't see the leather that guarded the hand.
They don't know the desperate width of his stance.

I was never designed to be perfectly still.
I was a wheel, I was the threshing wind.
I was the figure-eight drawn in the mud,
Where the forest of ash-wood began to thin.
My only terror is this velvet case—
The fear of the heavy, breathless pause,
Where I am just iron, and useless, and safe.

He took double the pay to step out in the front,
His left hand choked up past the parrying hook.
The hands soon forgot they were holding a tool,
The torso spinning before the eyes look.
We didn't chop at the spears, we swam in the flood.
If the arc ever broke, we were swallowed by wood.

I was never designed to be perfectly still.
I was a wheel, I was the threshing wind.
I was the figure-eight drawn in the mud,
Where the forest of ash-wood began to thin.
My only terror is this velvet case—
The fear of the heavy, breathless pause,
Where I am just iron, and useless, and safe.

Then the matchlocks got cheap, and the open field shrank.
And they forged bearing-swords for the dukes to parade.
Fourteen-pound fakes just to stand in the rank,
Fat, gilded cousins who lived in the shade.
And that's how you see me. A slow, heavy shape.
A monument waiting to finish its wake.

Just give me the arc.
Give me six feet of clearance.
Take me down from the wall.
I am dying of stillness.
I am losing the rhythm.
Don't let me stop.
Just don't let me stop.
Please.