Milk Harbour

Lyrics

The Final Spark
By Anthony Wall.

I knew a man who never took to whiskey nor to beer.
He never turned a playing card in all his many years.
He kept his bible close at hand and knew the gospels well.
But none of this can save a soul that’s born and raised in hell.

His father started drinking on the night his mother died.
Six young children all alone with no place left to hide.
And when the neighbors came to take the ones too small to run.
He uttered not a single word about the damage done.

At twelve they took him to the church and left him by the door.
Another broken boy to fight in their unholy war.

And as he grew they molded him for when he’d take his vow.
But all he ever wanted was an acre and a plough.
He went back to his father’s house to help him work the land.
In spite of stolen innocence he shook the devil’s hand.

He met the teacher’s daughter there when she was just a girl.
And took her from her reverie in to his darkened world.

The opened up a little shop just on the edge of town.
For thirty years they worked each day from sun up to sundown.
But those who’ve never known of love can have no love to show.
And so much time in want of love was time for her to go.

She died surrounded by her sons with only four years free.
But every day of those four years she lived her life in peace.

So now he sits and tends the embers of a life grown cold.
There’s no one left to feed the fire raging in his soul.
And even when the final spark is quenched and he lays dead.
He’ll always be my father, the only one I had.