“Song to the Siren”

Composed by Tim Buckley

2 versions

4:52

How About I Be Me (and You Be You)? album

Lyrics

	Long afloat on shipless oceans
	I did all my best to smile,
	'Til your singing eyes and fingers
	Drew me loving to your isle.
	And you sang, "Sail to me, sail to me, let me enfold you.
	Here I am, here I am, waiting to hold you."

	Did I dream you dreamed about me?
	Were you hare when I was fox?
	Now my foolish boat is leaning
	Broken lovelorn on your rocks,
	For you sing, "Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow:
	O my heart, O my heart shies from the sorrow"

	I am puzzled as the newborn child,
	I am troubled at the tide:
	Should I stand amid the breakers?
	Should I lie with Death my bride?
	Hear me sing, "Swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you.
	Here I am, here I am, waiting to hold you."

Quotes

Sinéad (Source: The Guardian, November 17, 2011)

"I first heard the This Mortal Coil version in 1985, just weeks after my mother died in a car crash, when I was 17. That's how I got through my mother's death, lying on the floor curled up in a ball, listening to Song to the Siren nearly all day, every day, just bawling. I still can't move a muscle when I hear [Fraser] sing it." O'Connor avoided covering it for years, "because I was afraid of what it would bring up. But in 2009, my eldest child Jake left home, and you'd think someone had died, I was so bereft. It bought up grief that wasn't about him leaving, so it became important for me to get that shit out and gone."

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