Dark Slavic-Ukrainian folklore in a form of the Nordic rock ballad.
Lyrics
In elder days a forest stood,
Unknowing, dark, and still,
Till in its mere an unbaptised maid
Was drown’d against God’s will.
New-born she sank with mother’s breath,
No prayer, no holy mark—
Her soul went down to root and bone
And woke the woodland dark.
O hear her sing, ye axe and hand,
The forest feels thy blow;
Where blood was warm, now bark shall stand,
And roots shall claim thee slow.
The trees then learnt the taste of pain,
Of iron bite and flame,
And from their grief the maiden rose,
A Mavka was her name.
Fair of face as summer dawn,
Yet in her back a wound—
A hollow through which beat no heart,
The forest’s grief entomb’d.
She roam’d the paths where men made scars,
She laid her hand on thee;
Flesh grew stiff and skin turn’d bark,
And blood became a tree.
With every soul she “returned” to earth
The woods crept further on,
And age upon her visage fell
As human tracks were gone.
O hear her sing, ye axe and hand,
The forest claims its due;
Where once ye stood as breathing men,
Now leaf and green and yew.
At last she met her mother’s eyes—
Her touch could not unmake.
So as she drown’d, so drown’d she her
Within the elder lake.
That death unbound the ancient spell:
The wound was seal’d and whole,
The dead heart beat with living fire,
The woods forgot its soul.
No path remain’d, no name, no sign,
The forest heal’d by sleep.
And on the shore at break of frost
A maid began to weep.
She shook with cold, for first she felt
The world’s unkind embrace—
A beating heart within her breast,
And dirt upon her face.
No song now stirs the root or stone,
No trees remember pain;
The forest sleeps, and she stands lone,
A woman born again.
