Counts What's Left and Finds It Good (Grateful)

Lyrics

The counting begins when the noise stops. Not before. After the shouting, after the trains, after the final gate swings shut on its hinge. The first number is silence. He remembers the manuscript, sewn into the coat lining. His whole life's work, rendered to ash at the gate. He remembers the pencil stub, the scavenged scraps of paper. Rebuilding a world with ghosts of words. He remembers the face of Emilie, a light held inside the skull when all other lights were out. The body can be numbered, starved, stripped. But the love, he found, had no weight. It could not be confiscated. So he counts what's left. The breath in his chest, a surprise every morning. The memory of a shared life. The choice of what to see through the wire. He counts what is left, after the fire, after the flood. And finds it good. Yes. Finds it good. Winter, nineteen hundred and forty-four. Auschwitz. The sky over the barracks caught fire. Orange and purple, indifferent, magnificent. A comrade whispered, "How beautiful the world could be." And in that moment, he chose. Not the grey cold. Not the hunger. He chose the sunset. He chose the conversation with his beloved in the quiet of his mind. The salvation of man is through love, and in love. So he counts what's left. The breath in his chest, a surprise every morning. The memory of a shared life. The choice of what to see through the wire. He counts what is left, after the fire, after the flood. And finds it good. Yes. Finds it good. April twenty-seventh, nineteen forty-five. Liberation. A clean blanket. A slice of real bread. The world felt alien, the joy was delayed. He walked through a field of flowers toward the market town, and felt nothing. Then, he knelt. Looked at the sky. And simply began the inventory. One. Two. He counts the warmth of the sun. He counts the taste of water. He counts the last human freedom. He counts the wound, and the light that enters it. The sum is life. The sum is good.