A short silence opens into the heartbeat-like pulse at 0:02, with the harpsichord figure entering over it near 0:12. Bass and ambient weight gather from 0:42, percussion thickening in the final bars. The job here is to set the contract — heartbeat, motif, steady moderate pulse — and hold the first voice back for a full minute.

Elizabeth Fraser arrives at 1:02 (Love, love is a verb) over the same pulse and motif. By 1:27 the two fragments that organize the whole song are on the table: Fearless on my breath and Teardrop on the fire. Nothing in the accompaniment changes for the entry; the voice is the event.

The voice exits and the harpsichord figure moves to the foreground over the beat — a brief handback proving the melody is a theme in its own right, not just accompaniment, while measuring out the space between verses.

Verse 2 reloads the same shape at 1:52 (Night, night of matter), refrains included, and stops at 2:20 on Fearless on my — the line left without its last word. From 2:20 to 2:55 a long instrumental stretch runs the motif over the groove, postponing the final vocal block.

The longest lyric block begins at 2:55 (Water is my eye / Most faithful mirror) and cycles the same fragments again and again, adding only Of a confession at 3:10. Repetition is the event: no new material arrives, the refrains simply re-sing until the confession lands. The motif resurfaces around 3:35, and at 4:00 the perspective shifts to the song's only second-person lines — You're stumbling in the dark, repeated at 4:09 — the last words sung.

With the voice gone, sustained string-like layers swell behind the beat to a broad peak near 4:48. Withdrawals then come in steps at 4:57, 5:03, 5:09, and 5:13, until drums and bass fall away around 5:12, leaving the harpsichord figure alone; its final notes break apart into silence at 5:23 with no re-entry. A single contract, kept for five minutes and then vacated.