By the time you read this letter

I'll be far away from here

I've left to find my fortune

outside of the weir

the world is not this island

to dig and die for gold

and how can I stay here

with australia full of gold



father won't forgive me

so mother don't you cry

for one day I'll return

with my head held high

for now keep that book

its words pulled my bowstring

and when I read them

for me changed everything



words on a page can weigh a ton

when the past is not undone



I stowed away on a ship

that sailed the western sea

city to the outback

was all I'd read it'd be

the war broke out in '41

I joined like every other son

and came back from rabaul

with my life and an empty gun



when I came back to canada

there were voices in my head

they spoke not with words

but with the faces of the dead

the strongest river current

can change its flow by force

but words brought me to the war

and changed my path and course



now as an old man

I think of all the things I've done

'cause I've lived my whole life

like a bullet from a gun

I look back at myself

and when I was 21

and when I'd read that book

of foreign lands and all or none

I wonder if my heirs

will think of what I've done

and if the sins of the father

will visit the son