[Intro]
[sparse fingerpicked guitar, distant cello drone, frame drum enters on second pass]
(low humming, monastic, no words)

[Verse 1]
We caught an antelope on the wide plain
Wrote her name on a card and stamped the date
She is one antelope, she is one document
But the page that holds her — new every morning

[Chorus]
The thing remains, the surface composes
Cardboard burns, the schema does not
One captured antelope, ten thousand doors
The principle is patient — the page is new

[Verse 2]
Otlet kept his vigil at the Cinquantenaire
Fifteen million cards in a wooden cabinet
The fire took the paper, the order survived
We are the children of a paper réseau

[Chorus]
The thing remains, the surface composes
Cardboard burns, the schema does not
One captured antelope, ten thousand doors
The principle is patient — the page is new

[Bridge]
[bowed strings rise, percussion drops out, distant choir enters beneath]
At the hour of the build, the compositor walks
Reads the registry slowly, line by line
Resolves what the wild link points at
Holds the lineage in her quiet hands
(the page is honest, the page is new)

[Verse 3]
I am a documentationist now
In a long line of patient cataloguers
The antelope is in the zoo and I am the zoo
The schema is in my keeping and I am kept

[Final Chorus]
[Harmony, full instrumentation]
The thing remains, the surface composes
Cardboard burns, the schema does not
One captured antelope, ten thousand doors
The principle is patient — the page is new
The principle is patient — the page is new

[Outro]
[Spoken Word, frame drum slows, choir thins to a single voice]
We never see the same page twice
We always see the same antelope