| We sent out the S.O.S. |
| call.
|
| It was a quarter past four, in the morning
|
| When the storm broke our second anchor line.
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| Four months at sea. |
| Four months of calm seas
|
| To be pounded in the shallows off the tip of Montauk Point.
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| They call 'em rogues. |
| They travel fast and alone.
|
| One hundred foot faces of God’s good ocean gone wrong.
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| What they call love is a risk,
|
| 'Cause you will always get hit
|
| Out of nowhere by some wave
|
| And end up on your own.
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| The hole in the hull defied the crew’s attempts,
|
| To bail us out.
|
| And flooded the engines and radio,
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| And half buried bow.
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| Your tongue is a rudder.
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| It steers the whole ship.
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| Sends your words past your lips
|
| Or keeps them safe behind your teeth.
|
| But the wrong words will strand you.
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| Come off course while you sleep.
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| Sweep your boat out to sea
|
| Or dashed to bits on the reef.
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| The vessel groans
|
| The ocean pressures its frame.
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| To the port I see the lighthouse
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| Through the sleet and the rain.
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| And I wish for one more day to give my
|
| Love and repay debts.
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| But the morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west.
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| They say that the captain stays fast with the ship,
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| Through still and storm,
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| But this ain’t the Dakota,
|
| And the water’s so cold,
|
| won’t have to fight for long.
|
| (This is the end.)
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| This story’s old but it goes on and on until we disappear,
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| (This is the calm.)
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| Calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed while you were underneath,
|
| (We are the risen.)
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| I am the one who haunts your dreams of mountains sunk below the sea,
|
| (After the storm.)
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| I spoke the words but never gave a thought of what they all could mean,
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| (Rest in the sea.)
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| I know that this is what you want, a funeral keeps both of us apart.
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| (Washed up on the beach.)
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| You know that you are not alone, I need you like water in my lungs.
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| This is the end.
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| …You never do see any other way… |