Safety Coffin

Lyrics

[Intro]
(earth settling, and very far above, a small bell)
The nineteenth century was extremely worried about this. Extremely.

[Verse 1]
Cholera puts people into comas that look like nothing else.
Doctors misjudge it. It happens enough to make it into the papers,
and once it is in the papers it is in every mind in Europe,
and a genuine mass anxiety takes hold that has a name —
taphophobia, the fear of the grave, of being put in early,
of waking in the dark with the lid an inch from your face.

[Chorus]
So they built the safety coffin. Dozens of patents. Dozens.
A cord in the hand, running up through a pipe, to a bell.
A flag that springs up. A ladder. A tube for the air.
A little glass window so the watchman can check the face.
Safety coffin. It was a market. It was an industry.
People bought these. People specified them in their wills.

[Verse 2]
There is one design with a hammer, and one that fires a rocket.
One with a bell so loud it was intended to wake the sexton at night.
And the cemeteries hired men to walk the rows and listen —
that was a job, an actual job, listening to the ground —
and the horrible detail, the one that stays with me, is this:
a body settles as it decomposes. The bell rings anyway.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
So the watchman hears a bell, and runs, and digs, at two in the morning,
in the dark, with a lamp, at speed, because there might be someone,
and there never is. There is never anyone. Not once, verified.
Not one confirmed rescue in the entire history of the device.
Every bell that ever rang in every graveyard in Europe
was a body settling. Every single one. And they dug every time.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(the bell, once more, and nobody comes)
It's just settling.
It's always just settling. Dig anyway.