Lyrics Tyan-Shan / Batyr - Kashgar

Tyan-Shan / Batyr

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