Malvina Reynolds: Song Lyrics and Poems  



The Fragile Sea

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1973 Schroder Music Company, renewed 2002.


Our fathers knew the ocean as a friendly enemy,
They took their equal chances in the storm.
They trusted in the sail, they fought the mighty whale,
They played like sunny children on the shore.

Chorus:
The sea, the sea, the fragile sea.
Our source, our provider and our road to liberty.
Now we use it as a dump hole in this mad economy,
And we never will survive a dying sea.

Our sister is the sea bird, our brother is the gar,
The smallest plankton creatures as important as we are.
The chain of life's been moving thru a hundred million years,
We cut it at our peril and the pipeline is the shears.

(Chorus)

Do you see the seagull dead in his integument of tar
Who was once a soaring creature of the sky?
It's the oil company that's now the ruler of the sea
That makes ocean and its children fail and die.

(Chorus)

Have you seen the crystal waters of the North Canadian coast?
That's how this planet's oceans used to be.
With our muscle and our brain we must make it so again,
For we never will survive a dying sea.

(Chorus)


Malvina Reynolds songbook(s) in which the music to this song appears:
---- The Malvina Reynolds Songbook

Malvina Reynolds recording(s) on which this song is performed:
---- [none]


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