Toggle menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

The Lonesome Boatman  (Bobby Sands)

From ProleWiki, the proletarian encyclopedia
More languages


The Lonesome Boatman
AuthorBobby Sands
TypePoem


In the middle of the sleeping lake

The Lonesome boatman dwells,

Around him rise the bracken hills

The dreamy glens and dells.

The skies are red and rolling

Tinted in the twilight’s velvet hue

The ragged scarecrow peers in relief

To where the crackling crows have flown.


The lonesome boatman doesn’t move

His clothes are old and worn

Oh, lonesome boatman reveal to me why,

Why you look forlorn.

Is it life’s sorrows

Or a forgotten memory that you have found

Or do you listen to the wind

For the boatmen you’ve seen drown?


Oh, lonesome boatman, there’s a gleaming star

High above your head.

The waters glisten in the dusk

Are they tears that you have shed?

Oh, lonesome boatman, the birds are here,

The morning shadows fall.

Oh, friends, why must you be

But a dying shadow on my lonely cell wall.