Zulfiqar

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
They paint me with a serpent's tongue,
a clean and holy line dividing the dark.
They trace my shape in gold when the songs are sung,
and forget the desperate, ordinary mark.
I was an instrument of unpolished iron,
not a metaphor, not a breath in a prayer.
I was a lever of gravity and bone,
and I knew the grip of the one hand that was fair.

[Chorus]

There is no sword like me, they say.
But steel is blind and steel is dumb.
My terror is the relic's display,
and the waiting for a lesser hand to come.
If I am the scale that weighs the right and wrong,
if I am the blade that makes the judgment true,
what happens when a mortal man picks up the song?
What happens when a tyrant swings me through?

[Verse 2]
I remember the valley at Uhud, the heat in the dust.
The way his palm knew my balance before the mind gave the word.
A current moving through the wrist, a perfect trust,
the quietest sorrow that the sky had ever heard.
Now I am a shape they cast in silver for their necks.
A charm to keep the shadows from the door.
They love the twin sharp points, the absolute effects,
but they do not want the burden of the war.

[Chorus]
There is no sword like me, they say.
But steel is blind and steel is dumb.
My terror is the relic's display,
and the waiting for a lesser hand to come.
If I am the scale that weighs the right and wrong,
if I am the blade that makes the judgment true,
what happens when a mortal man picks up the song?
What happens when a tyrant swings me through?

[Bridge]
The cleft at my tip is exactly three inches deep.
It catches the opposing blade, it binds the wrist.
It was never meant to be a secret they could keep,
a myth of righteous anger in the mist.
I am afraid of being drawn in the wrong name.
I am afraid of making murder look like grace.

[Outro]
I rest in the velvet, holding the blame.
Waiting for a shadow to cross this place.
There is no hero.

There is only the hand.
And the hand is gone.