Smoot

Lyrics

The wind off the river is a physical weight
It’s two in the morning in late '58
We’ve got half a tin of yellow and nothing to prove
Just a guy in a wool coat we’re trying to move.
He isn’t a martyr, he isn't a chief
He’s just the right length for a midnight belief.
Grab him by the collar, grab him by the shoe
The bridge is in darkness, there's work left to do.

Pick him up, lay him down, mark it at the head
The kings of the ancient world are comfortably dead
They built all their pyramids out in the sand
But we’re building an empire out of this kid's span.
Yeah, greatness is something you study in class
But immortality’s just happening to be...
Exactly the stick that we needed.

The grit on the pavement is chewing his sleeves
While the city around us unconsciously heaves
Right through the elbow of a decent tweed jacket
We’re making a terrible, beautiful racket.
Our hands learn his balance, the weight of his boot
Before we can think of him as Oliver Smoot.
He's tired, he's freezing, he wants to go home
But you don't map an empire by working alone.

Pick him up, lay him down, mark it at the head
The kings of the ancient world are comfortably dead
They built all their pyramids out in the sand
But we’re building an empire out of this kid's span.
Yeah, greatness is something you study in class
But immortality’s just happening to be...
Exactly the stick that we needed.

Decades go by and the asphalt gets thick
They bury the trolley lines, cover the brick
But they couldn't erase him, the joke was too deep
He's painted right back while the government sleeps.
Now the cops look away when the freshmen arrive
With a stencil and brush to keep history alive.
You can calibrate lasers to a fraction of space
But they don't have a guy who got tired in this place.

He’s a man in a suit now, he answers the phone
But out on the concrete, he's written in stone.
Lay him down.
Mark the ear.
Nobody remembers the engineer.