Masefield Drowned - Lyrics - Ballydowse
Ballydowse was a celtic punk rock band from Chicago, Illinois with a rare mix of anarchist and religious ideas infused into their music. Many of the group's members were from the Jesus People USA commune. In addition to the group's Mekons Pogues-style Celtic punk influences, the group also draws from world musics such as klezmer and Tibetan throat singing. Ballydowse released two albums both engineered by Steve Albini. The debut was entitled The Land, the Bread, and the People and was a home place for many who found common cause with certain elements of Christianity while rejecting the American right wing bias so prominent in the church at the time. Their second album Fertile Crescent continued this trajectory with a growing Eastern European flavor. The group's political activism over the economic sanctions on Iraq in the 2000s, prison reform, death penalty and the short-comings of capitalism was unique among Christian bands of the time. The group disbanded in 2003.
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(Chorus)
There is land and there is sea you're the spot just between
Where the walls grow the thinnest to the hidden majesty
There is joy and there is grief, where they lap there is just belief
And I know that the sweetest glimpse of faith is in your eyes
Between night and day when the whites they are grays
And the green world wears a pale blue mask upon its face
I step through I fall in a long lost home I've never been
I cannot stay forever but I'll never leave again
One road leads to London one road runs to Wales
My road leads me seawards to the white dipping sails
Leads me, lures me, calls me to salt green tossing sea
A road without earth's road dust is the right road for me
But one voice holds me steady, one voice holds me here
It's the voice of my only love calling me near
A wet road heaving, shining, and wild with seagulls' cries
A mad salt sea-wind blowing salt spray in my eyes
But I can let it wait, I can leave it all behind
For standing still with you is a journey of a kind
Like a jaunt upon an ocean of holy memories
Sails full and constant with a sweet stinging breeze
I may go down to the seas again, for th ecall of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that's hardest to deny
I may go down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy's life
To the gull's way and the whale's way
Where the wind's like a whetted knife
But I'll not go alone my love from this day on I swear
Whatever current lays below, you and I will share
