Tyan-Shan / Batyr Lyrics

Blistering white, the frost cracks his face,
Knife blades of wind cut him down,
Gusting in clouds, a cold death awaits,
A frost-caked burial shroud,
Cruel black walls, impossibly high,
Rending the sky in a rift,
Nothing else moves as the blizzard shifts,
White claws of pain is all that exists.

Terrifying peaks surround him,
Black on white on grey,
The path winds e’er before him,
Billowing storms swallow the day.

Struggle to live, yet life’s caving in,
A cruel joke incised by the ice,
Blind in the white, grope ever on,
Black flesh crying out to die,
Death stalks his path, frost slows his blood,
Altitude, torment of pace,
To cease is to freeze, to movement a slave,
These crags are his life, these cliffs are his
grave.

The blizzard whirls around him,
The ground drops off below his feet,
Spinning, gazing into the chasm . . .
. . . into the sickening vortex . . .
Down!

The howl draws him to his senses . . .
A wolf? The wind? His mind?

The horrors of war lie before him,
But he may fall before the fight,
To live impossible to fathom,
Fathoms below this white night.
Dawn, the break, that pass, it comes at last!
Down, below, the armies, swell and mass!

Batyr:

Centuries lived out in an instant,
Atrocities a function of existence,
Horror, upon horror,
and all an empty dream,
One moment of glory,
For a life of pain.

Arrows like rain cleansing more,
Wiping out the sickening parasites,
Who shall live, and who shall die?

Fighting for the tribal chief’s ideal,
Inflated by dogma, lies and steel,
The froth of the steed, sweat in his eyes,
And if you live, what then?
Filth.