The Gulf of Araby - Natalie Merchant

If you could fill a vale with shells from Killiney’s shore

And sweet talk in a tongue that is no more

And if wishful thoughts could bridge The Gulf of Araby

Between what is, what is, what is

And what can never be

If you could hold the frozen flow of New Hope Creek

And hide out from the one they said you might meet

And if you could unlearn all the words

That you never wanted heard

If you could stall the southern wind

That’s whistling in your ears

You could take what is, what is, what is

To what can never be

One man of seventy whispers free at last

Two neighbors who are proud of their massacres

Three tyrants torn away in a winter’s month

Four prisoners framed by a dirty judge

Five burned with tyres

Six men still inside

And seven more days to shake at the great divide

(X2) The Gulf, the Gulf of Araby

Well, we would plough and part the earth to bring you home

And harvest every miracle ever known

And if they laid out all the things

That these ten years were to bring

We would gladly give them up

To bring you back to us

O, there is nothing we would not give

To kiss you and to believe we could take what is, what is, what is

To what can never be

One man of seventy whispers not free yet

Two neighbors who make up knee-deep in their dead

Three tyrants torn away in the summer’s heat

Four prisoners lost in the fallacy

Five, on my life

And six, I’m dead inside

And seven more days to shake at the great divide

(X2) The Gulf, the Gulf of Araby