Skald's Ledger (Version 2)

Intro

Chalk dust settled thick on the scale house glass

Old man Voss kept a ledger bound in brass

Said the iron don't lie and the scale don't bend

Every name that crossed that gate got weighed in the end

Verse

Sixteen years old, gloves too big for my hand

Stacking plate on the hook where the foremen stand

Voss called me quick, said the numbers don't cheat

Wrote my name in the margin, said now you complete

The book that outlives every man on this floor

Frost on the rafters, blood dried on the door

Watched Delray lose two fingers to the press in July

Voss wrote it down clean, no tremor, no lie

Said grief gets a line but it don't get a page

Every debt paid in sweat gets its own kind of wage

I learned how to carry the cold like a coat

Learned the weight of a man by the ink in his throat

Voss died on a Tuesday, ledger open on his chest

Nobody cried loud, we just carried the rest

Buried him with the brass locked shut in his hand

Said now the whole yard's inheritance is mine to command

Chorus

The ledger don't forgive, it just keeps the score

Every scar's a line I carved into the door

Weigh the iron, weigh the man, call it even now

Cold hands write the names the fire won't allow

Verse

Now it's my hand on the brass, my ink on the sheet

Every man that walks through still gets his own beat

Marquis lost his knee to a chain that snapped loose

I gave him three lines and a place on the truce

Called it a debt to the yard, not a debt to be paid

Said the scale only balances what iron has made

I write down the hours like verses in stone

Every name that I log finds a life of its own

Kept the book through the strike, kept it through the freeze

Kept it when the union folded to its knees

Some men get statues, some just get a date

I give them both in the margins, I settle the weight

Twenty winters in, my knuckles look like Voss's did