Intro
Sand mold cracked where the pattern board used to sit
Grandfather's initials pressed in the rim of it
Furnace breathes orange like a throat that won't quit
Every gate in this county remembers his grip
Verse
Foundry floor at four, the ladle's already glowing
Pour it slow or it splits, that's the first thing worth knowing
He taught me the temper before he taught me my letters
Said molten don't lie, it just finds where you're weathered
Forty years on that line, hands wrapped like a boxer
Scar across his forearm shaped like a river crosser
Made the trellis for the bridge past the coal yard bend
Said a good cast outlives the men who tend it
I stood where he stood, breathing the same black smoke
Watched the metal go liquid, watched it learn how to choke
down into the shape we carved it centuries ago
Same pattern, same fire, same ash on the floor
Boss called us numbers but the iron called us kin
Every plate stamped with a name that never got in
the papers, the ledgers, the framed photograph wall
Just the gates still standing after all of it falls
Chorus
I was born in the pour, cooled hard in the mold
Every scar on my arm is a story retold
Iron don't forgive but it never forgets
I'm the testament standing when the fire is set
Verse
Plant shut down in oh-nine, robots took the ladle
Foreman cried in the lot, said the craft ain't stable
But my uncle kept a torch running out the garage
Welding rebar for the highway, no permit, no badge
Said the skill is the deed, they can't repossess it
Poured a railing for the church where they used to bless it
Free of charge, just for the sound of the choir
Told me legacy's the only thing louder than the fire
I took contracts nobody wanted downtown
Cast the fence around the lot where they tore the block down
Kids play basketball now where my mold used to sit
Don't need my name on it, just need it to fit
Twenty years from now some boy touch that rail
Feel the weld line rough like a scar, like a trail
He won't know my hands but he'll know what they made
That's the only kind of monument that don't fade
Chorus
I was born in the pour, cooled hard in the mold
Every scar on my arm is a story retold
Iron don't forgive but it never forgets
I'm the testament standing when the fire is set
Bridge
Found out later the gate I cast at nineteen
Held the yard where they locked my brother between
concrete and sentence, ten years behind that steel
Same hands that shaped the cage shaped what he'd feel
I don't carry that guilt like a stone in my chest
I carry it like temper, like the iron knows best
that what holds a man in can hold a man up too
depends who's pouring, depends what's true
Outro
Pattern board's retired, hangs above my door
Dust in the grooves where his initials wore
I don't need the furnace lit to feel the heat
The testament's finished. The testament repeats.
