Ashes Against the Grain

The texture of the soul is a liquid
that casts a vermillion flood.
From a wound carved as an oath;
it fills the river bank a sanguine fog.

These arms were meant to be lost!
Hacked, severed and forgotten.

The texture of time is a whisper
that echoes across the flood.
Its hymn resonates from tree to tree,
through every sullen bough it sings.

These boughs were said to be lost!
Torn, unearthed and broken.

Earth to flesh, flesh to wood,
cast these limbs into the water.
Flesh to wood, wood to stone,
cast this stone into the water.

The water pours its embracing arms 'round the stone.
Decay drips from the unquiet void.
Where the ice forms. Where life ends.

The stone is by the crimson blood, swallowed.
The red tide beyond the ebon wound, contorted.
My sacrifice bids farewell in this river of memory:
a wave to end all time.

Red birds escape from my wounds,
return as falling snow,
to sweep the landscape a wind haunted.
Wings without bodies.

The snow, the bitter snowfall.
You long to die in her pale arms, crystalline
to become an ode to silence.
In the soul of a mountain of birds, fallen.

The cascading pallor - of ghostless feather.

The snow has fallen
and raised this white mountain
on which you will die
and fade away in silence.

Instrumental

The woeful silence
and wind's reflection
of your body's pale ode:
an icy fortress
of blood and ages.

Sky fire above, ice below the hearth.
Sky fire above, ice below the hearth.

Fall away from me
to that citadel
at the end of time,
where death sleeps
and dreams of your buried pain.

There has never been a silence like this before.
There will never be an ode like this again.

Aurora swims in the ether,
Emerald fire scars the night sky.

Solstafir!

Amber streams from Sol
Are not unlike the waves
Of the sea, nor the endless horizon of ice.

Solstafir!

Aurora swims in the ether,
Emerald fire paints the twilight.

Heidrun bleeds the golden nectar
For the rising sun and the moon.
The midnight wolves who watch over the dawn,
The golden dawn.

Solstafir!

[Instrumental]