Sugar Trade

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.