Road of Bones

Thrown into a driving snowstorm

My eyes fill with darkness

I spoke against my country

And paid the price

Before me, foul Kolyma

Hungry maw swallows thousands

Feed her with the poor, the innocent

To work the mines

Ride, ride, ride on the road of bones

Die, die, die on the road of bones

Desolation does surround me

Permafrost is my cold bed

I'm a zombie of the Gulag

Dying slowly and living dead

Forty degrees below the redline

The purga blizzards howl

I curl up in my tent

To count my final days

Who I was no longer matters

I am nothing; I am no one

Just a tooth on this grinding gear

To break and be cast away

Ride, ride, ride on the road of bones

Die, die, die on the road of bones

Dread Vorkuta, whore of torture

Spreads her foul hands across the plain

In her clutches, Russia's children

Pray for death to end the pain

Discovered in this land of solitude

A message scratched into a frozen stone:

"We died here, our skin a frozen blue.

Remember us, the forgotten and alone."

On a day when the sun rose darkly

Body broken, spirit fled

The wind, it blew so hard,

My wounds scarcely bled.

Now I join the countless millions

Who in toil have died before me

Their bones ground into dust

To pave this road to hell

Ride, ride, ride on the road of bones

Die, die, die on the road of bones