SONG OF THE ETERNAL SAILORS

By Bruce Boston

From Liverpool to Shanghai, the waterways we roam.

The wave roar and the salt spray are our only home.

Across the dark Sargasso, into the chilling winds,

The wages of the past have covered all our sins.

Old Chorus:

Ah the sea so bright and eager,

O the ocean dark and wide,

Let the waters answer for us all.

Odysseus was the captain as we rowed across the waves.

We left the Cyclops blinded in the hollow of his caves.

We saw the singing Sirens, we could not hear their call,

Their beauty like a burning brand upon us one and all.

We sailed to the ocean’s edge before the earth was round,

The flapping of the sails made such an mournful sound.

Like men without a country, but for the country blue.

The maps are ever changing, the shoals are always new.

We rode with peglegged Ahab and how the man did rave.

His wooden limb is floating in the waters of his grave.

We scanned that thin horizon for a plume against the sky,

And when we manned the long boats, we let the steel fly.

With Nemo on the Nautilus we moved beneath the seas,

Alive under a rippling sky, with seaweed for our trees.

At forty fathoms down below, the silence reigns supreme.

The streets we left behind exist as no more than a dream.

Now we’ve fled the mother world and sailed into space,

As misfits, outcasts, pioneers...of the human race.

Across the Magellanic clouds, propelled by solar winds,

The wages of the past have covered all our sins.

New Chorus:

Ah the stars so bright and eager,

O the light years dark and wide,

Let the vacuum answer for us all.