Lee-Enfield

Lyrics

I was born in the grease of the armory floor,
To be the long right arm of a distant shore.

They handed me to a boy from a rain-washed town,
Eight pounds and change that weighed him down.
Ten rounds in the belly, two charger clips deep,
I promised to keep him alive in his sleep.
But I wasn't just iron and walnut wood.
I was a tempo he finally understood.

I was afraid of the rhythm.
I was afraid of the pace.
The way my bolt slid back and erased
The hesitation on a seventeen-year-old face.
They called it the mad minute, a brass-falling rain,
But I felt the moment I bypassed your brain.
I didn't just teach you to hold the line.
I made your heartbeat match mine.

Cock-on-closing action, a beautiful trap.
You didn't have to think, you just followed the snap.
Your palm knew the arc of my handle by rote,
Before the order ever cleared the sergeant's throat.
No time to look at the shape in the mud,
Just cycle and fire, just brass in the blood.
I made it too smooth to stop and decide.
I gave your conscience nowhere to hide.

I was afraid of the rhythm.
I was afraid of the pace.
The way my bolt slid back and erased
The hesitation on a seventeen-year-old face.
They called it the mad minute, a brass-falling rain,
But I felt the moment I bypassed your brain.
I didn't just teach you to hold the line.
I made your heartbeat match mine.

When the armistice whistle blew over the wire,
You stood in the trench, and you still tried to fire.
Your shoulder was jumping, your fingers were numb,
Waiting for targets that never would come.
I was built to be empty, to let the casings drop.

Now I sit in a case under halogen glass.
No cordite, no mud, no clatter of brass.
But somewhere, in the dark of a pension home bed,
My ghost is still cycling inside of your head.
Up, back, forward, down.
Up, back, forward.
Your hands are still moving in the dark.