Ewan McLennan - The Last Bird to Sing lyrics

As the winding path takes me down In the dust where the air grows still Past the shattered sills to where the broken bricks Lie tossed at the foot of the hill To the gentle hum of the engines far And the cry of the bird through the air With the falling grace of dull light on my face To the city I vacantly stare Down at these hands that hang by my side To the times they have twisted and bowed For the graft they've done, the thousand tasks been run To lie still and idle now As a boy I would sit here and whistle my tune And watch the world role on by From the heat of the red-brick factories roar The smoke spun soft in the sky My boyhood dreaming waned as I grew No more watching the race from afar With steel-toe boots and a coarse boiler suit A lad amidst the furnaces scars I learned my trade, how I listened and watched I worked as hard as hard can be But with pa**ing years I grew proud with hope Of a future that was never to be Late in the day as the Autumn turned pale A figure watched us work from the dor Into burning air his words spoke clear In a haze our jobs were no more I awoke each morning days stretched into nights And I lurched through a hollow routine In the queues each week with companions I'd stand But our fortunes had turned on our dreams For two sons and a daughter we had to provide My wife worked long into the nights To escape the stale air of a room with four walls I skimmed stones at the quarry till light In the years that followed things picked up and shone And I hustled a job where I could Re-sk**ed and re-tooled with a home of our own In a strange shifting world we were stood As time wore on our children grew tall And I taught them all that I'd learned In and out of trouble, the same as their dad Dodging cots, running streets at Pikes turn As some strangers say, we've carved our own way In a world that still lists and turns But once again there's no work for the young in this town And the queues form in air that still burns With the dusk tales said, as the evening light ebbs My son walks off into the night With only dull flapping wings of the last bird that sings He skims stones at the quarry till light