You can't walk through the Isle of the Dead, 

you can't lie still in the guest house bed, 

there's a pair of black eyes staring down at you from the mountain top, 

through yr window, 

The bunks are empty, your mates are gone, 

breakfast lasts an hour long, O warm bread, drawn tea, 

the bastards'll never get to me  



But somebody knows, somebody knows, 

somebody always knows, 

Where a body goes. 



I were one of two, we were joined at the shoe when we thought to make our break, 

so we shimmied our locks and we knocked up a box 

and we rode the thing down the waterway, 

Now the Derwent twists and the Derwent slides, 

It's a moving thing with many eyes, 

O who'd have thought, at all or often, 

that vehicle would become our coffin? 



So many souls, so many souls, so many souls in the water  

I left me a little daughter, and I left me a girl, 

and I left them alone, in that tired old world, O where are they now? 



I am one of a gang set to work on the land, a clearin' and fellin' 

and killin', 

The best of us here has a conscience clear and he goes about it keen 

and willin', 

We're shooting them from the rocks, 

and we're shooting them in the water 

and when they're runnin' we're shootin' them in the backs 

and we do it without a thought or care? 



So many lies, so many lies, so many lies been told  

We'll none of us here grow old  

Not gracefully, not peacefully, in this blind old land, 

in this dreaming land, some demon's land.