Time Will Crawl

The lyrics portray a world facing danger and ruin, while people seem unable or unwilling to resist. The repeated phrase “time will crawl” makes the threat feel slow, relentless, and difficult to escape. The mood shifts from strange, personal images to a disturbing scene of a whole town exposed to harm. By the end, the speaker describes lives being sacrificed for a reckless idea.

Several images suggest catastrophe without explaining its exact cause. A pilot who keeps flying until he bursts may represent dangerous ambition or a system that pushes people beyond their limits. The black stream, dying fish, and man drowning without eyes evoke poisoned surroundings and helplessness. The “talented child” who puts on a mask, followed by the smell of gas, suggests a hidden danger that the townspeople notice too late—or choose not to confront.

The lyrics can be read as a warning about blindness, denial, and the human cost of powerful decisions. The references to government, a pilot, and a “crackpot notion” point toward political or technological danger, but they do not identify one clear event. The surreal details may be literal within an imagined disaster, or they may express fear through dreamlike exaggeration.