They say the victor writes the book, the ink belongs to might The general tells the battlefield who fought the noble fight A cliché that we swallow whole, a bias of the tongue While silent stories rot beneath the ballads left unsung. We think we grasp the game of truth, we think the trick is clear: Just listen to who shouted loud, ignore who disappeared. But stone and clay and rusted nails obey a colder law, A stranger sieve of physics that conceals the fatal flaw. (Chorus) "Oh, they don’t make 'em like they used to!" the tourist sighs in awe, Staring at the marble steps without a fracture or a flaw. Look at that arch! Look at that span! It's stood two thousand years! Proof that our modern concrete world is junk made cheap by gears! Look again, tilt your head, see what the centuries cleared: The past made garbage just like ours— It simply disappeared. (Verse 2) Walk down into the riverbed where Caesar’s arches lean, Solid rock defying floods, magnificent and clean. Or look up at the Gothic vault, five hundred summers tall, The gargoyles sneering down at rust and modern drywall. We stroke the heavy iron plane, the blacksmith’s anvil horn, And swear the hands of yesterday were magically born. We crown an entire century with one surviving vault, And praise an age of master crafts that never had a fault. (Chorus) "Oh, they don’t make 'em like they used to!" the tourist sighs in awe, Staring at the marble steps without a fracture or a flaw. Look at that arch! Look at that span! It's stood two thousand years! Proof that our modern concrete world is junk made cheap by gears! Look again, tilt your head, see what the centuries cleared: The past made garbage just like ours— It simply disappeared. (Bridge) Where are the seven-story tenements the Roman slumlords built? Insulae of timber scraps, leaning in the silt! They collapsed in sudden squalor, they were flattened by the flame, Unsound mortar, crooked beams that never earned a name. Where are the peasant’s wooden carts? The shoddy wooden plough? The buckled floorboards rotted out a thousand years by now! Termites ate the cheap mistakes; the river swept the slag; Earthquakes threw down poorly mortared towers like a rag! You aren’t looking at the past’s mundane, workaday pride— You’re staring at the point-zero-zero-one percent That somehow stayed alive. (Guitar / Fiddle Solo) (Verse 3) Survivorship is sitting in the museum behind the glass, Pretending every copper kettle was built out of solid brass. A lottery where billions bought a ticket made of pine, And only twenty millionaires in stone cross over time. The dollar store of ancient Rome dissolved beneath the clay, The bargain bins of Babylon long ago washed away. So don't mistake the survivor for the common citizen: Time is just a janitor who threw away the tin. (Chorus) "Oh, they don’t make 'em like they used to!" the tourist sighs in awe, Staring at the marble steps without a fracture or a flaw. Look at that arch! Look at that span! It's stood two thousand years! Proof that our modern concrete world is junk made cheap by gears! Look again, tilt your head, see what the centuries cleared: The past made garbage just like ours— It simply disappeared. (Outro) They bought cheap nails. They built crooked sheds. They slept on wobbly, squeaking beds. History didn't write it out, The termites just ate it down. A mountain of trash... Beneath the crown. Time took the broom. Time swept the floor. Now we stand in the cathedral door... Saying, "They don’t make 'em like they used to." (Fade out on a lingering acoustic chord)
