Album Cover Say Goodbye

Say Goodbye

Dory Previn

6

When I was a babe the sea and the sun

were the mother's arms to which I'd run

Secure beneath the pure maternal sky.

Time went on we grew apart,

and I forgot my mothers heart

A heart deprived of love can only cry

And I am going away, I heard her say

I'm going away, I heard her say

I'm going away, won't someone say goodbye

When I was a child I ruled the earth

I owned it all, its total worth

Each fish, each field, each flower, each dragonfly

Then one day it occured to me

if I owned the earth, then the earth owns me

and each of us must live or both of us will die

And I am going away, I heard her say

Yes I'm going away, I heard her say

I'm going away, won't someone say goodbye

Alone in space we together float

a frightened crew in a fragile boat

and each of us must live or both of us will die

Each of us must live or both of us will die

After a nuclear war, ours will be a very different world. Everything we know, see, hear, feel . . . all we've inherited from our ancestors, from Galileo, from Da Vinci - we will have destroyed. All the music will be silenced: Beethoven, Mozart, the Beatles, no more. No more the books, the Bible, the human beings. Most people will die. They will be the fortunate ones. The unfortunate ones will suffer a lingering illness called acute radiation. Acute radiation is something never seen until the atomic bombs were dropped - by us - on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the sunny month of August, on a summer day just like today. . . .