The Living Wing

[Intro]
[Acoustic guitar fingerpicking in 6/8]

[Verse 1]
Along the rust cradles the spit is now bare,
The tar-scented jetty sinks deep into slumber.
Tied down under salty gray tarps in the cold,
Sleep beauties forgotten their flying and thunder.
A screech of a crane hauled them out of the spray,
Scrubbed clean of the kelp, locked away from the sea.
It’s dry, safe and quiet, asleep for the stay...
Yet rotting on land is such pure misery!

[Verse 2]

Still shivers in wind with its weather-worn stern —
Not surrendered to grief, not pulled out of the sea,
Not locked in a crypt for the winter's return.
The man and his vessel are carved of one grain:
Past seventy both, with the salt in their gaze.
In calloused old palms and diagonal stains —
A lifetime that never knew easier ways.

[Pre-Chorus]
The watchmen look on with reproach from the pier:
"Where the hell would you head in the frost of November?!
Look, gusts in the fairway are vicious out here,
And ice coats your brim in the breath of the harbor!"
Yet brittle old nylon goes up with a crunch,
The winch starts to groan and the halyards hum tight.
While blood in this body still pulses and pounds —
Let waves under keel sing of freedom and might!

[Chorus]
And heeling, the sail chokes on gusts from Nor'west!
The taut, singing shrouds scream aloud in the gloom!
The Gulf of the Baltic’s an unruly nest,
Where breakers of lead boil in fury and foam!
An icy sea drizzle cuts deep into skin,
Wild, ravenous blood hammer-strikes at the brow!
What weariness? Sickness? What weakness within?!
When under our soles breathes a living white wing!

[Verse 3]
Look back at the shoreline — so slick and so flat,
With blind, empty slipways like crosses in rows.
Where hulls rot away under tar-papered slat,
Afraid till the spring to wake up from their doze.
Out here on the edge, on the razor-sharp seam,
Where rooster-tails wake in the wash of the helm,
We've torn our true life from the dead iron dream,
We thrust our sharp stem through the storm-beaten realm!

[Bridge]
Let them say: "It is madness, reckless and late,
The season is over, the anchorage closed."
The birch trees on shore drown in twilight and haze,
As Kronstadt's pale beacons shine cold and exposed.
Before the fierce squall rips the bulkhead apart,
While heavy and stubborn the chest beats inside —
We’ll narrow our eyes with a smile at the gale
And offer the tempest our wing for the ride!

[Chorus]
Let the shoreline shrink back from the first winter frost,
Let them hide, all whose souls have grown weary and grey!
For us — only venomous seas, tempest-tossed,
And the wild, fierce rebellion of spray!

[Outro]
A tiny white dot on the face of the sea,
A lone sail flashes through breakers and foam —
A challenge to winter,
A final fierce line...
That the wind and the deep
Cannot wash from their home.

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