The Elements, Vol 1 · Track 8 · middle
Iron
Sung BY the element Iron (symbol Fe, atomic number 26), in FIRST PERSON — a character with a fear, a vanity, or a secret. Write ORIGINAL lyrics TRUE to this specific element's real chemistry, history and place in the world: the reliable workhorse of the whole world — and also the ash at the end of every star, the element where fusion finally dies; you are in the blade, the bridge, and the blood, and you are how the light goes out. NOT a generic 'I am an element' — find what is uniquely, specifically true of Iron. Clean, DistroKid/YouTube-safe. Register to the character.
Lyrics
Cold. Heavy. Master of them all. They woke me in the charcoal fire, twelve hundred years before their god. Learned my weight on the anvil. Felt my edge on the bone. I am the clang of the hammer, the roar of the blast furnace. Rudyard Kipling knew my name. He sat in his hall and called me master. They built their age on my spine. I am the girder and I am the rail. I am the engine and I am the nail. I am the red in the river of your veins. And I am the ash where the star's fire wanes. I am the end. Henry Bessemer gave me a new scream in 1856. A blinding white fire. I became the steel skeleton that scraped the sky for Gustave Eiffel. I am the shield. The plowshare. The cage. But I hear Oxygen whisper its love song. A patient, red kiss. The slow, wet work of coming undone. She gives the breath, and she takes the iron. I am the girder and I am the rail. I am the engine and I am the nail. I am the red in the river of your veins. And I am the ash where the star's fire wanes. I am the end. But before the hammer, before the rust... There is a silence in the heart of a giant. A core of unimaginable weight. When every lesser thing has been burned to make me... The fusion stops. The great light chokes. The gravity wins. I take no more. I give no more. I am the stillness before the fall. I am the bridge. I am the blood. I am the last, heavy beat. The light goes out in me.