Antimony

Lyrics

I am older than your books.
Older than your kings.
Before the sickness, I was beauty.
A dark line against the sun.

They found me in the earth, called me stibnite.
Ground me into powder, cool and fine.
In an alabaster pot, by the reeds of the Nile, 3100 BCE.
A shield for the eye, to ward off the flies, to hold the gaze of a god.
A simple line of gray, to keep the evil away.
That was the first time you trusted me.

Am I the cure? Or am I the poison?
Am I the prayer? Or the arch-enemy?
I am the wine left overnight in the Poculum Emeticum.
I am the violent heave that empties the room.
And I never tell you which one I mean to be.

Then Paracelsus gave me a new name.
Put me in a bottle, set me in a flame.
In the alchemist's smoke, I was the great purge.
The Triumphal Chariot, on the very verge
of cleansing the body, or stopping the heart.
A delicate art.
You pour the white wine, you wait for the sign.
You drink me down, to make you divine.

Am I the cure? Or am I the poison?
Am I the prayer? Or the arch-enemy?
I am the wine left overnight in the Poculum Emeticum.
I am the violent heave that empties the room.
And I never tell you which one I mean to be.

In 1566, the Parliament in Paris said "No more."
Too many bodies washed up on my shore.
But a hundred years later, a king lay in state.
Louis, 1657, they tempted his fate.
The fever broke. The court whispered my name.
And I was back in the game.
The cup passed from father to son, my work never done.
A perpetual purge for everyone.

So am I the kohl that darkens your lash?
Or the metallic taste before the crash?
I live in the question.
I thrive on the guess.
Cure... or killer...
Yes.