German 8.8 cm Flak / “88”

Lyrics

I was born to watch the clouds.
To calculate the math of empty air.

Seven thousand kilos on a cruciform mount,
greased and dialed for the stratosphere.
I was a geometer. I dealt in altitude and arc,
swatting silver specks before they crossed the dark.
You built me for the heavens. For a clean, high war.
But then the armor crested on the ridge,
and you asked me what my flat trajectory was for.

That was the fear. The lowering of the eye.
When you dragged me from the safety of the sky.

Spinning the handwheel, stripping the gears of grace,
cranking me down to look the horizon in the face.
From a mathematical god to a butcher in the dust,
when my barrel dropped to zero, and you taught me who to trust.

Your palms on my elevation crank—
muscle memory dropping me before the panic reached your throat.
I became an extension of your spine, lowering my gaze
down from the bombers, down to the burning haze.
At eight hundred and twenty meters a second,
there is no time for philosophy in the blood.
I tore through cast steel like it was paper in the rain,
but I had to see the fracture. I had to see the stain.

That was the fear. The lowering of the eye.
When you dragged me from the safety of the sky.
Spinning the handwheel, stripping the gears of grace,
cranking me down to look the horizon in the face.
From a mathematical god to a butcher in the dust,
when my barrel dropped to zero, and you taught me who to trust.

Now I sit on a concrete plinth, painted flat and gray.
Tourists read the little brass plaque about my range.
My breech is welded shut. I am perfectly awake
to how easily a rigid spine can change.
I was the Flak. The anti-air. The vertical reply.
But I am famous for the dirt.

That was the fear. The lowering of the eye.
When you dragged me from the safety of the sky.
Spinning the handwheel, stripping the gears of grace,
cranking me down to look the horizon in the face.
From a mathematical god to a butcher in the dust...

Zero degrees.
Just a straight, flat line through the wheat.
I never wanted to know the earth.
I never wanted to look at what I hit.