On a late spring day, when summer began to take shape
You lowered your head to bear an uneven compromise
How your voice held steel, make sharp by the sound of it aloud!
You were drunk on each syllable; you could not even hear what it sang

When you were young, you spent your summers in maine
And stripped of the friends you made
You gorged yourself on frost and hemingway

When you came back to michigan
You would walk with words you did not speak
And dress yourself with an air we couldn't reach

So when you go back to maine, I hope that you stay
(Where you have corned truth and beauty)
And each borrowed refrain you sing, you sing
You sing will sound the same to the lonely, lonely sea