One Sunday morning I chanced to hear
A rumbling and a tumbling in the atmosphere
One Sunday morning I chanced to hear
A rumbling and a tumbling in the atmosphere
I ran to stare, people were flocking everywhere
Gesticulating and gazing and pointing in the air
It was the Graf Zeppelin which had come to pay a visit to Trinidad.
I gazed at the Zeppelin contemplatively
And marvelled at man’s ingenuity
The whirring of the engines was all I heard
As it floated in the air like some giant bird
And in between as the mighty airship gleamed
The pilot and the sailors and the passengers were seen
They were waving little flags which they had heralding their visit to Trinidad.
I gazed and the knowledge came back to me
How wonderful the work of man can be
To see that huge object in the air
Maintaining perfect equilibrium in the atmosphere
Wonderfully, beautifully, gloriously
Decidedly defying all the laws of gravity
Was the Graf Zeppelin which had come to pay a visit to Trinidad.
As I gazed at the Zeppelin something touched my hand
I turned and saw an old, decrepit ------- man
He said to me pointing at the Zeppelin
"Massa, can you tell am what is that thing?
Me feel to bawl, for me can't understand at all
He have nothing hold him up dey and still he never fall."
He was speaking of the Zeppelin that had come to pay a visit to Trinidad.
Another verse sung elsewhere:
The visit of the Zeppelin will ever be
Indelibly impressed in my memory
Such a sight I'd never seen before
I gazed at it in consternation and awe
I chanced to hear a big, fat woman said, "Me dear!
Not for a million dollars I wouldn't go up in the air!
They may talk about modernity
But I think that the ground good enough for me."
Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance!
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"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.
Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.
Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare
2 comments:
I only know it from a record but is it cooly or cooli man?
And is it. "It was a Graf Zeppelin that they had, come to visit in Trinidad."?
Thanks so much for the suggestions, likatyga. Yes, that is the missing word [it ends in "ie"] which I deliberately omitted because I understand that for some it is as offensive as the n-word. The definition from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition explains that it was "a name given by Europeans in India, China, etc., to a native laborer employed as a burden-carrier, porter, stevedore, etc., or in other menial work....hence, in Africa, the West Indies, South America, and other places, an East Indian or Chinese laborer who is employed, under contract, on a plantation or in other work."
Blessings
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