A Titanic Episode

So the ship will sail For those who have the price to pay And I have a tale To leave here if I pass away This journal will speak To the journey I now shall take From life here so bleak To sunrise future that shall break *** Come back with me to the cinders flying To Kelly's coal yard and my story My skin made black and my age is hoary Time is hard and, no bit worth living And over there not far away building A ship of dream unsinkable real And in my heart dreaming a fervent zeal To be aboard with the sailing I am a coal man, that is who I am I know the heat, and I fan the flame So I'm hired for furnace to move the frame Across the deep cold Atlantic dam I have no kith to love me, kinfolks gone To America for a promised land It does not matter then my blistered hand I seek too another better dawn What was it, I did not know, yet awake Her sunlight hit the deck, made it glow And my heart was warmed on the lake like snow The first day aboard, my sugar cake. And all I had to do was rescue her sack From wayward trampling feet, then aboard I brought it, gallantly and without sword I cut the prejudice swiftly back Kindness is the key that opens love door And that was all my life did own I went down, and she a next stair shown The rich is well closed off from the poor Would she forget what I remembered still Her soft sweet skin, her sun shining smile My heart young again, pining all the while To know if her pearly ever will We soot black ones never got a permit To see from atop the eager sea But she touring her palace came down to me Found my furnace, and sweating did sit. She preferred the flame to the faceless sea The flickering fires, the frantic eyes The tiger tenaciously stalked the prize Of rippling muscles soft humility. And so like birds we scraps of dreams sharing From day to day discover afresh The human worth in our human flesh The long and sultry sweet of longing My heart cast off from life boat and reason Blackened her with accidental touch And she overcame, into me rushed The first kiss has so short a season. Five days is a long time for love to grow An eternity for a kiss What did I know of icebergs and cold mist What could my furnace not melt below And yet this clamouur, and frights wild uproar And all the pushy orders given I got her a lifeboat, a boat's heaven And wept that she was gone evermore But she looking back, saw me there weeping And jumped to swim back that dismal sea Hence Diary my last entry to thee For I must jump in, farewell, I'm going.