Eric Bogle The Sign Lyrics

The Sign Lyrics

"The Sign"

-Eric Bogle



In the summer of last year, in a city* far
from here

That stands on the shores of the fair Pacific sea

I walked
it's pleasant streets, no view in mind, no one to meet

Content to wander
where my aimless feet led me



A few streets from my hotel, I passed an
old stone wall

where three words had been scrawled by an unknown
hand

When I read them I stopped dead, in disbelief I shook my head

For
the words on that wall read, "Free Bobby Sands"



As the sun began to
fall, and the day began to die

Thought I heard the wild geese call, from a
dark and empty sky

For long minutes I stood there, in that busy
thoroughfare

While the past rose sharp and clear in my mind's
eye



I saw it all again, the passion, hate, and pain

the
indifference and the shame as a young man died

But it was all so long ago,
and who now cares or knows

why Bobby Sands chose his lonely
death?



But to the one who wrote that sign,

it seems that Bobby's
light still shines

The words rang from another time,

but the paint was
fresh



As the sun began to fall, and the day began to die

Thought I
heard the wild geese call, from a dark and empty sky

So I went down to the
sea, to let it's wild song comfort me

But my thoughts would not let me be,
and unchecked they ran



Through my future, present, and past,

not
for the first time nor the last

I heard them ask, "Could you be the kind of
man

who would gladly sacrifice everything, even life

and put no price on
a cause, or an ideal?"

No answer echoed in my heart, so I turned and I
walked back

through the twilight's deepening dark, to my
hotel.



****************

Historical Note:

Bobby Sands, MP, was
imprisoned in 1981 under criminal charges

stemming from his alleged
involvement in IRA terrorist activities

in Ulster Province (Northern
Ireland).  Mr. Sands, along with

20 other alleged IRA members in prison
awaiting trial, went

on a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions in
the prison, and to

have the IRA members reclassified as "political
prisoners".

The hunger strike lasted more than 60 days, resulting in the
deaths

of many of the prisoners, of which Mr. Sands was the first to
succumb.



*Auckland, New Zealand