Lyrics Down Here Below - Steve Earle

Down Here Below

Pale Male, the famous red-tail hawk
Performs wingstands high above midtown Manhattan
Circles around for one last pass over the park
Got his eye on a fat squirrel down there and a couple of pigeons
They got no place to run, no place to hide
Pale Male, he’s cool, see
Because his breakfast ain’t going nowhere
So he does a loop t’loop
For the tourists and the six o’clock news
Got him a penthouse view
From the tip-top of the food chain, boys
He looks up and down Fifth Avenue
And says, «God, I love this town»
But life goes on down here below
And all us mortals struggle so
We laugh and cry and live and die
That’s how it goes, for all we know
Down here below
I saw Joe Mitchell’s ghost on a downtown A train
He just rides on forever
Now that the Fulton Fish Market’s shut down
He said, «They ain’t never gonna get that smell out of the water
I don’t give a damn how much of that new money they burn»
Now Hell’s Kitchen’s «Clinton» and The Bowery’s «Nolita»
And The East Village is creeping across the Williamsburg Bridge
Hey, whatever happened to Alphabet City?
Ain’t no place left in this town that a poor boy can go
But life goes on down here below
And all us mortals struggle so
We laugh and cry and live and die
That’s how it goes, for all we know
Down here below
Pale Male swimming in the air
Looks like he’s in heaven up there
People suffering everywhere
But he don’t care
But life goes on down here below
And all us mortals struggle so
We laugh and cry and live and die
That’s how it goes, for all we know
Down here below