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                           Living in the Present

                   Words and music by Tom Martin

On a now distant day in May

They said farewell and sailed away

From a land where they could not stay and survive…

Like so many others before

They gaze at that approaching shore

And wonder what fate held in store as they arrive.

Diamond mines … wishing wells or telegraph lines all

the way to hell…

Philistines or infidels making those deals

With the scribe and the pharisee

The lost tribe seeking sanctuary

Locked into dark mysteries that time hasn’t healed

Living in the present …poisoned by the past..

With the promise of progress in the black powder  blast…

Well Mick Ryan wrote to me

And so I sailed across the sea

To the land of opportunity…and dirty tricks.

In the mountains of Virginia where you can make a

better life if you’ve got in you

But you cannot win when the game is fixed

Wages we would have sent home

Were often stolen and we were left alone…

Broken like those stones we soon got sick

Now the fog of history lies everywhere

Caught in the mystery of charades we share

Who is it who really cares who lived, who died…

I saw the sadness heard the hate

Stepped outside those graveyard gates

With the ghosts time alone creates walking at my side.

I was living in the present…poisoned by the past

With the promise of progress in that black powder blast…

I was living in the present…poisoned by the past

With the promise of progress in that black powder blast…

Clann Mhor would like to thank Tom Martin for this beautiful and haunting song about the Irish workers who built the Blue Ridge Railroad.  Have a listen......