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Saigon Bride Lyrics

Artist: Joan Baez
Album: Joan

(Music by Joan Baez, Lyrics by Nina Duscheck)

Farewell my wistful Saigon bride
I'm going out to stem the tide
A tide that never saw the seas
It flows through jungles, round the trees
Some say it's yellow, some say red
It will not matter when we're dead

How many dead men will it take
To build a dike that will not break?
How many children must we kill
Before we make the waves stand still?

Though miracles come high today
We have the wherewithal to pay
It takes them off the streets you know
To places they would never go alone
It gives them useful trades
The lucky boys are even paid

Men die to build their Pharoah's tombs
And still and still the teeming wombs
How many men to conquer Mars
How many dead to reach the stars?

Farewell my wistful Saigon bride
I'm going out to stem the tide
A tide that never saw the seas
It flows through jungles, round the trees
Some say it's yellow, some say red
It will not matter when we're dead

1967 Robbins Music Corporation and Chandos Music (ASCAP)
Rights throughout the world controlled by Robbins Music Corporation

Comments/Interpretations

by John P Patterson on 11/8/2013 12:48pm
A tide that makes slaves of men women and children alike, what is the cost to build such a dike?
We came to keep men free what more can you ask of me? We asked no land, no tribute, only a place to bury those who died to keep you free.

by Robert B. williams on 7/12/2014 9:56pm
This is an anti-war song against the Viet-Nam War.