Sword of Goujian

Lyrics

Millennia in a flooded box.
The wood swelled shut. The water held me tight.
I listened to the roots crawl overhead,
Waiting for the end of the long night.

They laid me deep in the Hubei mud.
I thought I would sleep like the rest,
Turn back to dirt and copper blood,
A ruined thing, quiet and blessed.
But my makers were too clever.
They laced my skin with sulfur and tin,
Drew black diamonds down my spine.
I waited for the rot to begin.
It never did.

Oh, let me rust. Let me turn to green ash in the rain.
What good is a perfect edge with no one left to claim?
The empire blew away, the king is a ghost,
And I am terrified of being the thing that lingers most.
I am sharp. I am awake.
And I cannot break.

In 1965 the ceiling cracked open.
Not hands of war, but hands of white cotton.
They pulled me from the tight wood bed,
Gasped at a mirror they thought was dead.
They measured my sorrow in the sudden day:
Fifty-five point six centimeters that refused to decay.
No nicks on my collar. No dust on my guard.
I survived the silence a little too hard.

Oh, let me rust. Let me turn to green ash in the rain.
What good is a perfect edge with no one left to claim?
The empire blew away, the king is a ghost,
And I am terrified of being the thing that lingers most.
I am sharp. I am awake.
And I cannot break.

A hand used to close around my hilt
Before a mind even knew the threat.
Now they stare through heavy glass.
They study the shape of an ancient regret.
A blade that outlives its enemy by two millennia
Just has a lot of time to think.

I could still cut twenty sheets of paper.
I am just as I was made.
But I am a ghost in a metal skin,
Waiting for the air to win.
Please, let me fade.