Don, Tell Me Again

Don, tell me again How to get from Homehill to Ironshore How to wring sugarcane in hot sunshine And get new rum. Don, tell me again How to swim across the canal, With hook and line and clothes And find the ripe naseberry tree The birds are crying from Don, tell me again For I have sat here all evening long Listening to hear you call To meet and cluster in the sandbed As every boy would do But out of the silence only comes The waves of the sea The tides lonely hum Don, tell me again Life from birth to death is not vain That all our passions were not for this A futile fumble in the head To rage and wage, and then we are dead Our only solace the magic of it The thing we could not understand The dream like rum in our head Don, tell me again That now we are all gone You feel non pain And over and over the sea Like a voice through the willow Calling me O, but why should I return In silence to die For this could not be the plan When we were born ... just to die Then what is living for? Only love, No bigger purpose, would be a lost Love must say more at all cost Don, tell me again A man's faith in God cannot be vain