The Tide Remembers

Down where the grey cliffs meet the roaring foe;

My grandmother walked these stones alone;

She told me the sea keeps the ledger of the lost;

Every sailor, every promise, every crossing and its cost;

The village has emptied and the church bells gone still;

And the young ones have scattered over water and hill;

But the tide comes in as it always has done;

Faithful as the setting and the rising of the sun;

Stone forgets and the people roam;

But the water always carries us home;

The tide remembers, the tide remembers;

Every name that the cold sea took;

The tide remembers, the tide remembers;

Reading us back like an open book;

The tide remembers and it carries us home;

I put a candle in the window like the ones before;

For the ones who went out fishing and who came back no more;

The whistle on the wind is an old and holy sound;

It's the voice of all the leaving and the coming around;

I am only here a moment,

I am foam upon the swell;

But the sea will hold my story and it tells it very well;

So I'll sing it to the water and

I'll let the current keep;

This little song of mine in the ledger of the deep;

Stone forgets and the people roam;

But the water always carries us home;

The tide remembers, the tide remembers;

Every name that the cold sea took;

The tide remembers, the tide remember;

Reading us back like an open book;

The tide remembers and it carries us home;

And when my own long walking's done;

And they lay me where the two seas run;

Don't you weep and don't you mourn;

But I'd remember;

I'll be carried, I'll be born;

The tide remembers, the tide remembers;

Every name that the cold sea took;

The tide remembers, the tide remember;

Reading us back like an open book;

The tide remembers;

And it carries us home;

It carries us home;