Johnny, do you remember when
We wed in the church of San Sebastian?
When you went away; I sit and pray and think of you
By the stained glass windows, blue, with all the breezes blowing through the filtered sunlight.
what to do, you're gone now to fight some war in sunny Spain,
I'll never see you again; some war you always had there going 'round in your head,
You never could stay in a marriage bed.
Our fate is sealed, the bedroom or the battlefield.
The Basques will yield to war, I know what you were fighting for.
Wherever you are, wherever you go, this I know,
I'll be the last to know.
I sit and pray the sunlit hours away, and stained glass windows seem to mock my joy,
For you left me here with your golden haired baby boy.
They say they found you, Johnny what can I do?
I pray to God and all his angels that they will look down, look after you.
I look down on your child in my arms, and pray that God will help him grow up sane,
Not wild like you, while the windows blue, the stained glass windows,
And the sunlight shining through,
The nights of longing have aged me Johnny, and my eyes are tired,
The other day at work I heard someone say, if didn't pay attention, I'd be fired,
I'm working every day, and it's all I can do to pay the little fellow's way,
But when you return some day, I know you'll come home to stay.
I think I'd die, I ask my God the reason why you had to run away,
(Your child is nearly five, if you are still alive
Then you'll come home some day).
You were always wild, that's what the neighbours say;
The villagers they gossip and they talk each day;
They shake their heads and say all women in their marriage beds should be-
Oh Johnny, if they only knew that I'll be loving you eternally.
We walk as soldiers in the rain, the padre said, and God sustains us in our fright;
The dark night of the human soul, He throws the light of love across my mind,
Like the stained glass windows with the filtered sunlight through, but will we find you?
Oh Johnny, I feel blue.
Though the shadows leave me blind, I'm writing you this letter in my mind.
Johnny, they say you're wild, I ask these blessing on our child;
Oh, bless me Father, the rights and wrongs of all this world,
A poor girl cannot make this old world spin, we lose more often that we win,
But Johnny, will you come back home, we are your next of kin.
The sunlight filters through the stained glass windows, blue, the red and gold,
Johnny, I'll be here when our son has grown and I am old,
The golden glow of sunlight flickers on the evening that is past.
The sunlight falls on garden walls, the candle light goes out at last
In the dark night of the soul.
All the neighbours say you were a runaround, a vagabond who could not be trusted anyway,
But they don't know the way you loved me, changed me from a girl into a woman,
Made me feel complete, do you remember when we loved in San Sebastian
And life was sweet?
You'll come back this way; each day I drop in just to say a little word
To Christ the Lord, could you afford the ticket, Johnny?
We could send the money right away,
You'd fill our day with joy, you'd see your baby boy,
You'd come home to stay then, to stay,
And we would love again in San Sebastian.
Dear God look down upon me,
On your golden child, his eyes of blue, he sees me crying in the night,
He asks so often, softly asks of you,
The fighting and the bitter nights, the weariness has made me old.
Still sunlight falls on garden walls the same as when we loved in San Sebastian.
Do you remember when, so long ago,
I loved you so in San Sebastian?
(The story now is told, I'll leave it written in the ageless gold)
Copyright Anne Marie Wyse-Murray
Anne Marie Wyse-Murray copyright words and music
Voice and Music Anne Marie Wyse-Murray
