Nickel

Lyrics

They saw my reddish blush in the rock and thought they were rich.
They called me a goblin's promise.
A devil's vein of copper.

Down in the dark of the Saxony Erzgebirge, the air thick with sweat and curses.
The men saw red, a warm promise of copper in the lamplight.
They swung their picks until their hands bled, hauled me to the surface.
They fed me to the fire.
They called me Kupfernickel.
That's the name they spat in the slag.
A goblin's hoard of nothing but trouble.

I'm the almost-fortune, the fool's-gold cousin.
I am the devil's copper, the color of a beautiful lie.
The heat in your smelter that gives you dust and a bitter smoke.
I'm the little red itch under the wedding ring you thought was real.

Then came a careful man with clean hands and a name.
Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, Stockholm, 1751.
He burned away the arsenic ghost, boiled off the miners' spite.
He gave me my own place, my own number.
Just Nickel.
But I never forgot the goblin.
I'm the five-cent piece that feels like silver in your fist.
I'm the cheap plating on the faucet that flakes away.

I'm the almost-fortune, the fool's-gold cousin.
I am the devil's copper, the color of a beautiful lie.
The heat in your smelter that gives you dust and a bitter smoke.
I'm the little red itch under the wedding ring you thought was real.

No, I'm not lead in the pipes, I don't work on your bones.
I'm not polonium in the tea, I don't stage a quiet coup.
My work is smaller.
More personal.
The green stain on your wrist from a birthday watch.
The creeping welt from the rivet in your jeans.
A slow, spreading dermatitis.
A petty revenge for being called a counterfeit.
For being misunderstood.

Just a little irritation.
A memory from the mine.
A whisper.
Kupfer... nickel...
The devil you know.
The itch you can't quite... reach.