WHITE STAG
P.W. Elerum & Sun
(Calling)
Origin
(Basement Instrumental)
Mud Grave
Sighing
(Summoning)
Quiet Echoes
Hunting
(3rd Floor Instrumental)
Wasted Wealth
(Calling)
(Instrumental)
Origin
In the place where the animal went down to the water to die
A swamp grew
In rotting stump wood
The darkest homes
The people stopping only long enough for day to come
Holding breaths
Waiting for morning among the bones
The white stag hung on a skeleton in the dusk,
Skin surrendered, bleached and weathered,
Then broken and blown
A snag fallen into the mud from the tallest tree
No one seeing
A wooden antler
Decaying poem
In the mud
Basement Instrumental
(Instrumental)
Mud Grave
In the mud, where rotting animals bloom
Urban honking
Echoes of someone hidden from sight,
Saying, “This was our home”
In the mud of the bed of the river at night
Echoes echoes
In trains and traffic
“This was our home”
Someone insistently stayed in this spot,
Lying and bragging
The desperate promoters
Cold and alone
In the mud, at the end of the unknown world
All “discovered”
All forgotten
Cold and alone
And the white stag is looming
Above its mud grave
Shining cursing
Built on bones
Sighing
Now in the roar of machinery, I hear a sighing:
“Please remember what came before”
Now in the murky streets, I hear a sighing:
“Please remember this was our home”
Desperation and hunger among the stumps
Covered in sludge from where you crawled ashore
Insistently yelling the loudest boasts
Rather than “thank you,” the voices say “more”
Now a pile of mud and bones beneath
Layer after layer of naïve hope
Waking up again in a short-sighted youth
Ten thousand years forgotten
And now in the roar of machinery, I hear a sighing:
“Please remember what came before”
Now in the murky streets, I hear a sighing:
“Please remember this was our home”
Summoning
(Instrumental)
Quiet Echoes
Can I summon the imagined white stag from the mud?
In the roar of machinery, quiet echoes,
And sustainably harvested thin veneer
Outside the window I see a suffering horde
And hundreds of years of short-sighted memory loss
Held in one building with void in its core
But the feeling of humming ventilation
Reminds me of the wind that tears the stone,
Eventually reducing this to silt again:
The architecture students’ final form
Hunting
With no wind tearing through,
No air in the morning,
The haunting of the building’s left to me
To appear in the room, to embody a specter,
To fulfill the pregnant former factory
Flooded with fluorescent light,
Drowned in ventilation,
Offices alone at night, humming
Dwelling on the past to bring the dead to life
I walk slowly, every night,
Through the empty rooms of the changing shape
Hunting the white stag to see beyond,
To the ancient pursuit
Following a feeling
To here, where you found it dead in the mud
3rd Floor Instrumental
(Instrumental)
Wasted Wealth
Grappling uneasily with a memory,
I sing a song to make it clear
If a building is my mind being hollowed out,
Many stories, many rooms,
Then I’m an aging shell propped up in slow decay
Forgetting all I had, too soon
Lost wisdom
Roaring in the traffic
Under looming tombstone sign
Summoning memory
Did something start here?
Wild salmon in the reeds
Glowing flooring was sleeping under trees
From business experiment to living place
Built on darkness blossoming
White stag: rare and alone and dead
In the wrong place, at home
Grappling uneasily with wasted wealth
A tall memorial shines
(Calling)
Origin
(Basement Instrumental)
Mud Grave
Sighing
(Summoning)
Quiet Echoes
Hunting
(3rd Floor Instrumental)
Wasted Wealth
(Calling)
(Instrumental)
Origin
In the place where the animal went down to the water to die
A swamp grew
In rotting stump wood
The darkest homes
The people stopping only long enough for day to come
Holding breaths
Waiting for morning among the bones
The white stag hung on a skeleton in the dusk,
Skin surrendered, bleached and weathered,
Then broken and blown
A snag fallen into the mud from the tallest tree
No one seeing
A wooden antler
Decaying poem
In the mud
Basement Instrumental
(Instrumental)
Mud Grave
In the mud, where rotting animals bloom
Urban honking
Echoes of someone hidden from sight,
Saying, “This was our home”
In the mud of the bed of the river at night
Echoes echoes
In trains and traffic
“This was our home”
Someone insistently stayed in this spot,
Lying and bragging
The desperate promoters
Cold and alone
In the mud, at the end of the unknown world
All “discovered”
All forgotten
Cold and alone
And the white stag is looming
Above its mud grave
Shining cursing
Built on bones
Sighing
Now in the roar of machinery, I hear a sighing:
“Please remember what came before”
Now in the murky streets, I hear a sighing:
“Please remember this was our home”
Desperation and hunger among the stumps
Covered in sludge from where you crawled ashore
Insistently yelling the loudest boasts
Rather than “thank you,” the voices say “more”
Now a pile of mud and bones beneath
Layer after layer of naïve hope
Waking up again in a short-sighted youth
Ten thousand years forgotten
And now in the roar of machinery, I hear a sighing:
“Please remember what came before”
Now in the murky streets, I hear a sighing:
“Please remember this was our home”
Summoning
(Instrumental)
Quiet Echoes
Can I summon the imagined white stag from the mud?
In the roar of machinery, quiet echoes,
And sustainably harvested thin veneer
Outside the window I see a suffering horde
And hundreds of years of short-sighted memory loss
Held in one building with void in its core
But the feeling of humming ventilation
Reminds me of the wind that tears the stone,
Eventually reducing this to silt again:
The architecture students’ final form
Hunting
With no wind tearing through,
No air in the morning,
The haunting of the building’s left to me
To appear in the room, to embody a specter,
To fulfill the pregnant former factory
Flooded with fluorescent light,
Drowned in ventilation,
Offices alone at night, humming
Dwelling on the past to bring the dead to life
I walk slowly, every night,
Through the empty rooms of the changing shape
Hunting the white stag to see beyond,
To the ancient pursuit
Following a feeling
To here, where you found it dead in the mud
3rd Floor Instrumental
(Instrumental)
Wasted Wealth
Grappling uneasily with a memory,
I sing a song to make it clear
If a building is my mind being hollowed out,
Many stories, many rooms,
Then I’m an aging shell propped up in slow decay
Forgetting all I had, too soon
Lost wisdom
Roaring in the traffic
Under looming tombstone sign
Summoning memory
Did something start here?
Wild salmon in the reeds
Glowing flooring was sleeping under trees
From business experiment to living place
Built on darkness blossoming
White stag: rare and alone and dead
In the wrong place, at home
Grappling uneasily with wasted wealth
A tall memorial shines