Drunken Boat Lyrics - Pogues

The wind was whipping shingle through the windows in the town 

A hail of stones across the roof, the slates came raining down 

A blade of light upon the spit came sweeping through the roar 

With me head inside a barrel and me leg screwed in the floor 

Mother pack me bags because I'm off to foreign parts 

Don't ask me where I'm going 'cause I'm sure it's off the charts 

I'll pin your likeness on the wall right by my sleeping head 

I'll send you cards and letters so you'll know that I'm not dead 

By this time in a week I should be far away from home 

Trailing fingers through the phospor or asleep in flowers of foam 

From Macao to Acapulco from Havana to Seville 

We'll see monoliths and bridges and the Christ up on the hill 

An aria with the Russians at the piano in the bar 

With ice floes through the window we raised glasses to the Czar 

We squared off on a dockside with a couple a hundred Finns 

We dallied in the 'dilly and we soaked ourselves in gin 

Now the only deck that I'd want to walk 

Are the stalks of corn beneath my feet 

And the only sea I want to sail 

Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk 

Where a kid crouched full of sadness 

Lets his boat go drifting out 

Into the evening sun 

We sailed through constellations and were rutted by the storm 

I crumpled under cudgel blows and finally came ashore 

I spent the next two years or more just staring at the wall 

We went to sea to see the world and what d'you think we saw? 

If we turned the table upside down and sailed around the bed 

Clamped knives between our teeth and tied bandannas round our heads 

With the wainscot our horizon and the ceiling as the sky 

You'd not expect that anyone would go and fuckin' die 

Now the only deck that I'd want to walk 

Are the stalks of corn beneath my feet 

And the only sea I want to sail 

Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk 

Where a kid crouched full of sadness 

Lets his boat go drifting out 

Into the evening sun 

At nights we passed the bottle round and drank to our lost friends 

We lay alone upon our bunks and prayed that this would end 

A wall of moving shadows with rows of swinging keys 

We dreamed that whole Leviathans lay rotting in the weeds 

There's a sound that comes from miles away if you lean your head to hear 

A ship's bell rings on board a wreck when the air is still and clear 

And up above that means another angel's got his wings 

But all below it signifies is a ship's gone in the drink 

Now the only deck that I'd want to walk 

Are the stalks of corn beneath my feet 

And the only sea I want to sail 

Is the darkened pond in the scented dusk 

Where a kid crouched full of sadness 

Lets his boat go drifting out 

Into the evening sun