Verses by @SamTheBard

The tide came in at Ballykeel
with a smell of rust and weed,
and the gulls cried out like hungry bairns
and the boats came home with speed.
But one boat did not come that night,
and the harbor bell rang low,
for the sea keeps what the sea takes
and it does not tell us so.

Sing hey for the salt, sing ho for the star,
sing for the lads on the water so far.
The wind she blows and the hearth burns bright,
but the sea keeps her own on a winter's night.

Young Colm had a girl on shore,
a ribbon in her hair,
and he swore he'd bring her silver spoons
from the markets over there.
He swore he'd bring her silken thread
and a comb of ivory,
but the sea keeps what the sea takes
and it keeps it from you and me.

Sing hey for the salt, sing ho for the star,
sing for the lads on the water so far.
The wind she blows and the hearth burns bright,
but the sea keeps her own on a winter's night.

His mother keeps a candle lit
in the window by the door,
and she sets his plate upon the cloth
as she did the night before.
For the sea keeps what the sea takes,
and the heart keeps what it will,
and the harbor bell rings low and slow
and the boats come home, but still.

Sing hey for the salt, sing ho for the star,
sing for the lads on the water so far.
The wind she blows and the hearth burns bright,
but the sea keeps her own on a winter's night.

The girl walks down to the harbor wall
with the ribbon gone from her hair,
and she casts no coin and she speaks no name
to the grey air standing there.
For the sea gives back what the sea will give,
a spar of wood, a shoe,
and the heart learns slow what the heart must learn:
to let the bell ring through.

The ferryman's hands are a map of the tide,
all salt-cracked and knuckled and slow,
and he counts out the coins with a click on the rail—
cold copper, the last of my fare, and I know
that the engine will cough like a man out of breath
as we push from the pier in the dark,
with the gull-light gone and the harbor lamp low
and the water as black as a dog's bark.

There was Brigid who swore she would follow me down,
but she stood on the steps with her shawl
pulled tight to her chin, and she said not a word,
and I heard the wind take the farewell from us all.
She had flour on her sleeve from the morning bread,
and I mind how she brushed it away,
as if what we'd been could be dusted right off
and swept out with the crumbs of the day.

The tide takes the harbor the way it takes all—
the rope and the rust and the name
that a boy carved deep in the boathouse door
when the summer still tasted of rain.
And the ferryman hums an old smuggling tune
that his father hummed after the war,
and the stars come out one by one overhead
like coins on a dresser drawer.

So it's over the water and into the fog,
and it's never look back at the light,
for the girl on the steps has her own road to walk
and I've mine, and the both of us right.
And the engine will cough, and the ferryman'll swear,
and the salt will come up on my lip,
and I'll carry Dunmore in the crook of my arm
like a stone that I can't let slip.