There It Is

INTRODUCCIÓN HABLADA

I have said this once about a frightened squire.
I have said it once about a monster only I could see.
I did not know, saying it either time,
that I was answering a question
I asked myself alone, by a fire,
on a night I thought no one heard me ask it.
Someone heard.

VERSO 1

A bridge stands open that once took a toll
A ledger forgives now instead of collecting
A man who was sent to kill me splits firewood for the street
And no longer flinches at his own reflection
This is not the village I rode out of
This is not even the man who rode

VERSO 2

A woman once pulled me clear from a dragon's reach
Before I even knew that I'd been struck down
A boy drove a broken lance where I couldn't see to strike
And somehow discovered he was leading, not just following
I told myself I was doing this alone
I was never once doing this alone

PUENTE

I asked once, by a fire, half-ashamed to ask it —
what does it make me, the man who only watches
I have the answer now, and it isn't the one I feared
Watching, in the end, was how I let them become this

ESTRIBILLO

There it is
The thing I rode out to find
Not in a windmill, not in a dragon
It was standing in the road behind me the whole time
There it is
A place that stopped calling cruelty weather
There it is
And I did not have to be the one who stayed to keep it

FINAL

There is still a debt that doesn't end here.
It never did.
Wherever honor's been left unattended next —
I'll find it.