Lyrics Procol Harum

Procol Harum

Underture

Each man has a soul

That struggles to escape

And in the shallows of his dreams

We can often see its wake

For we all have our secrets

That we all keep deep inside

Away from light, in darkest night

Where it's always safe to hide

Away from all that we should meet

Less someone else should share

That thing that hides inside our soul

That we pray was never there

And out upon that ocean

A lifetime from the shore

Miguel stood his night watch

Recalling everything he saw

For he was a deckhand

Aboard the "maersk dubai"

He had sailed her round the world

From hamburg to sendai

But this trip had been different

More than any he had known

For on board there was an evil

And the evil had been shown

For halfway through this voyage

They had found two stowaways

That the captain had thrown in the sea

And left them to the waves

And when he tried to close his eyes

And pretend he did not know

The evil did not go away

But used the time to grow

For later on that same trip

They found a stowaway once again

But the captain soon met this one too

And brought him to the same cold end

He wondered what that boy thought inside

Before that final sleep

When water was all that was around

And his lungs had screamed breathe deep

He wondered what went through his mind

As he gasped for air

And the last moment when he prayed for help

To find nobody there

He wondered to himself

If he could have been the one

To stand up at that moment

And say this cannot be done

To stand up to the captain

And say this thing it cannot be

But there is nothing closer to god on earth

Than a captain on the sea

And he was just a deckhand

With no right to plead the case

Of this stranger in their midst

And so he kept his place

And what is done is done

And undone cannot be

And so he pushed it from his mind

And stared out across the sea