Make & Break Harbour

How still lies the bay,
 in the light western airs
 which blow from the crimson horizon.
 Once more we tack home,
 with a dry empty hole,
 saving gas with the breezes so fair.
 She's a kindly cape islander,
 old but still sound,
 but so lost in the long liners shadow.
 Make and Break and make do
 but the fish are so few,
 that she won't be replaced should she founder.
 Now it's so hard to not think of before the big war
 when the cod went so cheap but so plenty.
 Foreign trawlers go by now with long seeing eyes
 taking all where we seldom take any.
 And the young folk don't stay
 with the fisherman's ways.
 Long ago they all moved to the cities.
 And the ones left behind,
 old and tired and blind,
 won't work for a pound, for a penny.
 In Make and Break Harbour the boats are so few.
 Too many are holed up and rotten.
 Most houses stand empty.
 Old nets hung to dry
 are blown away lost and forgotten.
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 Now I can see the big draggers
 that stirred up the bay
 leaving lobster traps smashed on the bottom.
 And they think it don't pay
 to respect the old ways
 that make and break men have not forgotten.
 For we still keep our time
 to the turn of the tide.
 In this boat that I built with my father
 still lifts to the sky, "One Lunger," and I
 Still talk like old friends on the water.
 In Make and Break Harbour the boats are so few.
 Too many are holed up and rotten.
 Most houses stand empty.
 old nets hung to dry
 are blown away lost and forgotten.
 In Make and Break Harbour the boats are so few.
 Too many are holed up and rotten.
 Most houses stand empty.
 old nets hung to dry
 are blown away lost and forgotten.