Runes in the Concrete (version 2)

Intro

Grandfather mixed the mortar by hand before the sun came up

Wrote his name in wet cement, let the sidewalk hold it up

Said the city forgets the mason once the building's tall

Said a mark in the concrete outlives us all

Verse

Six a.m., Delmore Ave, the trowel in his palm

Forty years of laying block, never sung a psalm

Foreman clocked him late one time, docked a quarter of his pay

He just poured the next slab, let the anger dry that way

Initials by the curb, a cross beside his name

Said every builder's buried but the building stays the same

I used to walk that block to school, never knew the code

Thought the scratches in the sidewalk were just cracks in the road

He'd tell me, boy, the ground remembers what the papers don't

Said the deed forgets the digger but the dirt still won't

Broke three ribs in sixty-eight, still showed up Monday clean

Said pain's just weather passing, wipe your boots and stay lean

Never owned the buildings, only owned the hands that raised them

City tore the old ones down, the footprint still praises them

Found his initials last July under a bus stop bench

Traced it with my finger like a scar I couldn't wrench

Chorus

Left my name in the wet cement, let it set like law

Runes in the concrete, that's the only flag I saw

No monument, no headline, just the ground I stood upon

Runes in the concrete, long after we gone

Verse

Now I'm stacking boxes at the warehouse off Route Nine

Scanner beeping like a heartbeat keeping perfect time

Manager don't know my name, just my badge and bar code

Twelve-hour shift, I still scratch my initials by the loading road

Same blood as the mason, different decade, same design

Building empires out of packages, never get a line

In the story of the brand, we the ones