Not a pirate’s life for you, my boy, never.
Today, I close my eyes and see you near a fireside; your feet firmly planted on ground, and your red hair glaring like an angry sun. That’s my boy, that’s my boy. You don’t belong here, not on a ship carrying the weight of countless dead men, carrying the stench of rotting flesh and food, sweat and blood. You bear in your heart the touch of Earth. I have dreamt of you on nights when the mates have reeled under the influence of sea-sickness or some strange disease that threatened to push them closer to that sharp divide between life and death. But wait, life upon this plagued ship is nothing but death-in-life. I have dreamt of you as an escape. There are battles waged on board; warring is a way of life. You lose an eye, a limb, and yet you carry on. There’s no rest until your cold, cold body is bound up in some old sail-cloth and tossed into the sea.
We fight against strangers, looting, plundering and slitting throats- it is not in a pirate’s nature to show mercy, they say. I can almost feel your heart breaking my boy, because there aren’t any swashbuckling heroes here- we are ruthless, deviant, deceitful creatures. Yet, there used to be an honest sailor’s blood in me…
Could a letter to a child be more inappropriate? What should I write then, my boy? Should I string stories of adventure, of lost treasure and golden doubloons as big as your fist, of a wooden legged captain and his talking parrot? A pirate’s life is such a cliché, is it not?
Yet, not a pirate’s life for you, my lad, never. But here, we are sailors, no matter how unnatural our breed may be. There’s a bit of the sea in all of us, I believe. On calm nights, we breathe in as deep as our festering lungs would allow us to and we start to believe in our way of life. On stormy nights, we drink enough to quell the rising sea within us, enough to fight with our own shipmates till we are spent and contented. It’s time to hoist the anchor and set the sails. You be good my boy, while I live and die by the skull and crossbones.
Today, I close my eyes and see you near a fireside; your feet firmly planted on ground, and your red hair glaring like an angry sun. That’s my boy, that’s my boy. You don’t belong here, not on a ship carrying the weight of countless dead men, carrying the stench of rotting flesh and food, sweat and blood. You bear in your heart the touch of Earth. I have dreamt of you on nights when the mates have reeled under the influence of sea-sickness or some strange disease that threatened to push them closer to that sharp divide between life and death. But wait, life upon this plagued ship is nothing but death-in-life. I have dreamt of you as an escape. There are battles waged on board; warring is a way of life. You lose an eye, a limb, and yet you carry on. There’s no rest until your cold, cold body is bound up in some old sail-cloth and tossed into the sea.
We fight against strangers, looting, plundering and slitting throats- it is not in a pirate’s nature to show mercy, they say. I can almost feel your heart breaking my boy, because there aren’t any swashbuckling heroes here- we are ruthless, deviant, deceitful creatures. Yet, there used to be an honest sailor’s blood in me…
Could a letter to a child be more inappropriate? What should I write then, my boy? Should I string stories of adventure, of lost treasure and golden doubloons as big as your fist, of a wooden legged captain and his talking parrot? A pirate’s life is such a cliché, is it not?
Yet, not a pirate’s life for you, my lad, never. But here, we are sailors, no matter how unnatural our breed may be. There’s a bit of the sea in all of us, I believe. On calm nights, we breathe in as deep as our festering lungs would allow us to and we start to believe in our way of life. On stormy nights, we drink enough to quell the rising sea within us, enough to fight with our own shipmates till we are spent and contented. It’s time to hoist the anchor and set the sails. You be good my boy, while I live and die by the skull and crossbones.
Let them call me a pirate, and you? A gypsy.
