Underture
Savatage Lyrics

Each man has a soul
Every person possesses an inner spirit

That struggles to escape
That desires to free itself from repression

And in the shallows of his dreams
Is visible in one's subconscious

We can often see its wake
Indicated by signs of its presence

For we all have our secrets
All people have private matters

That we all keep deep inside
That we keep buried within ourselves

Away from light, in darkest night
Obscured by darkness and kept hidden

Where it's always safe to hide
Where it can remain concealed and protected

Away from all that we should meet
Away from what we ought to confront

Less someone else should share
Lest another person should discover it

That thing that hides inside our soul
An element that conceals within us

That we pray was never there
That we hope had never been present

And out upon that ocean
On the expanse of the sea

A lifetime from the shore
Faraway from land

Miguel stood his night watch
Miguel maintained his lookout duty

Recalling everything he saw
Remembering all he had observed

For he was a deckhand
As he was a member of the ship's crew

Aboard the 'maersk dubai'
On the vessel named 'Maersk Dubai'

He had sailed her round the world
He had navigated the vessel across the globe

From hamburg to sendai
From the port of Hamburg to Sendai

But this trip had been different
However, this journey was unlike previous ones

More than any he had known
More so than any he had experienced

For on board there was an evil
For there was wickedness present

And the evil had been shown
And it had become apparent

For halfway through this voyage
In the middle of this journey

They had found two stowaways
They discovered two individuals hiding aboard

That the captain had thrown in the sea
Whom the captain had cast into the water

And left them to the waves
Abandoned them to the mercy of the sea

And when he tried to close his eyes
And Miguel attempted to ignore the situation

And pretend he did not know
And feign ignorance

The evil did not go away
The wickedness didn't dissipate

But used the time to grow
Instead, it continued to expand

For later on that same trip
Upon further progress on the journey

They found a stowaway once again
They discovered another person hiding onboard

But the captain soon met this one too
The captain, once more, disposed of the stowaway

And brought him to the same cold end
And left him with just his unfortunate demise

He wondered what that boy thought inside
Miguel speculated about what the stowaway felt

Before that final sleep
Before falling into a slumber from which he’d never wake up

When water was all that was around
As he was surrounded by nothing but water

And his lungs had screamed breathe deep
And as his lungs ached, he was forced to inhale deeply

He wondered what went through his mind
Miguel pondered what thoughts went through the stowaway's mind

As he gasped for air
As he struggled to breathe

And the last moment when he prayed for help
At the moment when he last sought assistance

To find nobody there
Only to discover that his plea went unheard

He wondered to himself
Miguel mused to himself

If he could have been the one
If it was possible for him to have been the individual

To stand up at that moment
To take a stand at that exact time

And say this cannot be done
To declare that the situation was unacceptable

To stand up to the captain
To oppose the captain's actions

And say this thing it cannot be
To insist that such actions should not be taking place

But there is nothing closer to god on earth
But in this world, nothing is closer to a divine being than a ship captain

Than a captain on the sea
Especially if that captain is on the sea

And he was just a deckhand
Yet he was only a crew member

With no right to plead the case
Without the authorization to present his argument

Of this stranger in their midst
In defense of the outsider among them

And so he kept his place
And thus he remained in his position

And what is done is done
What has happened cannot be changed

And undone cannot be
The past cannot be undone

And so he pushed it from his mind
So he repressed the memory

And stared out across the sea
And gazed into the boundless horizon of the sea