[Intro]
[Twelve-string guitar harmonics answer three bowed-lyre notes in slow 6/8.]

[Verse 1]
Beyond the old pasture, half lost in the drift,
A stone leaned open where hard frost had split.
Red paint had faded; the lichen was brown.
One half faced the hillside, one half had fallen down.
I cleared it with fingers gone stiff in the cold
And traced through the cuts my memory still held.
Your name began where the fracture drove through;
The first marks remained, but the last broke in two.

[Chorus]
The Broken Rune still holds one line.
Your hand once rested there in mine.
Though frost has split the stone in two,
The half that stays still speaks of you.
No god replied, no raven flew.
I learned to read the break as true.

[Verse 2]
We raised it one spring when the lambing was done,
With juniper garlands warmed by the sun.
You laughed as the stonecutters argued at noon,
Then carved one small mark at the edge of the rune.
"Leave one mistake. Let proud stone confess
That hands can make beauty and still make a mess."
The fracture spared that crooked line;
Your smallest fault outlived the sign.

[Chorus]
The Broken Rune still holds one line.
Your hand once rested there in mine.
Though frost has split the stone in two,
The half that stays still speaks of you.
No god replied, no raven flew.
I learned to read the break as true.

[Verse 3]
I wanted to carry the stone from the field,
Bind it with iron, repair it and shield.
But six men were needed for grain and spears;
No shoulders were spare for the weight of my years.
I copied the letters on leather instead,
Then added the names of the newly made dead.
The fragment stayed open beneath the cold sky.
Not every loved thing can be saved when we try.

[Bridge]
I had ordered men forward and ordered men stay.
Here, with no witness, command fell away.
I pressed my brow to the frost-split stone,
A widower weeping, no longer alone.

[Instrumental Break]
[Clean guitar and bowed lyre restate the melody while low distorted chords enter without increasing the tempo.]

[Final Chorus]
The Broken Rune still keeps one line,
The crooked mark you carved beside mine.
Though war has split our world in two,
The living half must carry you.
No god replied, yet this I knew:
A broken word can still be true.

[Outro]
I tied your copied letters beneath the crown's ring.
The wind crossed the fracture with one hollow string.