The Great Ship

I was seized with desire to sail the great seas, the waves set my young soul afire

I was all but deaf to my family’s pleas It’s as if they knew what would transpire

I must put in writing the horrible tale of a tragedy long in the making,

For the captain, I’m sorry to say, was a fraud, and the voyage a cruel undertaking.

He was surly and childish, he craved only praise, He cared not a whit about others

He had minions of course did this captain of ours Though they knew he’d toss over their mothers

When the first mate got sick, t’was December the 8^th  And soon others began to fall ill

By the end of the month, as the sick bay filled up The captain said ‘do what you will’

“A sickness quite new”, our esteemed doctor sighed He’d seen nothing like it before

And just three days later the poor first mate died And was sent to the barren sea floor

The new year arrived, we docked at a port And learned that this illness had spread

And the captain refused any others aboard We pulled anchor and sailed on ahead

Now the sickbay was bursting with agonized cries Their ultimate words I recorded

While the bosun transmitted a pack of bald lies That they’d left the boat fully rewarded

Now the sick bay is sealed and the sailors grow weak The cries of the ill and infected

O’er the lapping of waves and the mizzenmast’s creak Can only be faintly detected

No port will admit us, despite our great need The captain says we’re self sufficient

The healthy among us repeatedly plead But his hearing, it seems, is deficient

If you find the bottle that carries this note We implore you to alter our fate

We’re alone and adrift on this plague-ridden boat The formerly great Ship of State

Oh master, mock not, oh sailor heed warnings Believe that what I write is true

Pray when you awaken on one of these mornings That this has not happened to you:

That your captain has drunk the elixir of fools And listens to siren-song voices

And believes that he and not Nature makes rules Leaving you with the poorest of choices

My strength is abating, my ink well runs dry A desperate fate is at hand

Dear reader, please save us, or we’ll surely die We long for our forefathers’ land.

Lyrics by Galit and David Gottlieb

Music by Galit Gottlieb

Instrumentation, Lead Guitar, Engineering by Steve Yastrow