Sugar Trade

(album: Dad Loves His Work - 1981)

Now back when this earth was a silver blue jewel
and back when your grandfather's father was young,
men of these shores made and gave up their lives pulling up fish from the sea.

While down in the African slavery trade, stealing young men to cut sugar cane,
rum to New Bedford and codfish from Maine,
they were building a wall that will always remain.

Oh, the crown and the cross the musket and chain,
the white man's religion, the family name.
Two hundred years later and who is to blame?
The captain or the cargo or the juice of the sugar cane?

The doryman he knows when the riptides will run,
he sets out his nets and he sits in the sun.
He thinks of his family and drinks of his rum and he waits for the codfish to come.

It's the same goddamned ocean that keeps them alive,
it will swallow you up, it will let you survive.
It will heal you and steal you and take you away
like a note in a bottle with nothing to say

Now back when this earth was a silver blue jewel
And back when your grandfather's father was young,
Men of these shores made and gave up their lives pulling up fish from the sea.