You can't walk through the Isle of the dead
You can't lie still in the guest house bed
There's a pair of black eyes staring down at you
From the mountain top, through y'r window
The bunks are empty, your mates are gone
Breakfast lasts an hour long
O warm bread, drawn tea
The bastards'll never get to me
But somebody knows, somebody knows
Somebody always knows
Where a body goes
I were one of two, we were joined at the shoe
When we thought to make our break
So we shimmied our locks and we knocked up a box
And we rode the thing down the waterway
Now the Derwent twists and the Derwent slides
It's a moving thing with many eyes
O who'd have thought, at all or often
That vehicle would become our coffin?
So many souls, so many souls
So many souls in the water
I left me a little daughter and I left me a girl
And I left them alone in that tired old world
O where are they now?
I am one of a gang set to work on the land
A clearin' and fellin' and killin'
The best of us here has a conscience clear
And he goes about it keen and willin'
We're shooting them from the rocks
And we're shooting them in the water
And when they're runnin' we're shootin' them in the backs
And we do it without a thought or care?
So many lies, so many lies, so many lies been told
We'll none of us here grow old
Not gracefully, not peacefully in this blind old land
In this dreaming land, some demon's land