The River and the Boy

The seagulls are returning home,
O little boy, O little boy,
The seagulls are returning home,
O little boy, O little boy
Tell me if you can hear the lapping sounds
Of the full tide coming in,
O little boy, O little boy,
Tell me if you can hear the lapping sounds
Of the full tide coming in,
O little boy, O little boy,
And follow the seagulls on their homebound trail,
O little boy, O little boy,
And follow the seagulls on their homebound trail,
O little boy, O little boy
The river tonight is full of deep mysteries
The river tonight sings in blind ecstasy
O little boy, O little boy,
And the moon hangs too low,
Its silken face against the river’s ample bosom,
O little boy, O little boy,
Return home then on the homebound trail
Follow the sound of the seagulls as they flee
The gathering night
O little boy, O little boy,

But the boy stayed rooted by the river,
And before the seagulls departed,
Their frightening calls shaking the silken bosom
Of the trembling night,
I saw the boy unfetter a canoe swaying to and fro
On the lapping tide,
And with his face to the sea, paddle into the gray
& golden night.

I was a boy when he left the laughing pearl,
Sea-kissed island on the back of the back of the world,
On that golden night of moon-washed earth
and lapping kisses,
For the roaring sea beyond the gray
and roaring horizon,
& never returned with the ancient voyagers
of the endless horizon,
The seagulls, their laughing cries rocking the bosom
of our island universe.
The drums throbbed the next morning,
all day long, & all night long.
The dirges came in like the swift river
going home to the sea,
& rose and fell, rose and fell like
the throbbing bosom of a grief-stricken mother.
& every year now on the anniversary
of his departure for the high seas,
I hear her cry, mingled with the homebound cry
Of the seagulls,
The seagulls are returning home,
O little boy, O little boy
The seagulls are returning home,
O little boy, O little boy.
Tell me if you can hear the lapping sounds
Of the full tide coming in.