If you smile at me I will understand
'Cause that is something everybody
everywhere does in the same language
I can see by your coat my friend you're from the other side
There's just one thing I've got to
know, can you tell me please, who won
Say can I have some of your purple berries
Yes, I've been eating them for six or seven weeks now,
Haven't got sick once
Probably keep us both alive
Wooden ships on the water very free and easy
You know the way it's supposed to be
Silver people on the shoreline, let us be
Talking about very free and easy
Horror grips us as we watch you die
All we can do is echo your anguished cries
Stare as all human feelings die
We are leaving, you don't need us
Go take a sister, then, by the hand
Lead her away from this foreign land
Far away, where we might laugh again
We are leaving, you don't need us
And it's a fair wind blowing
warm out of the south over my shoulder
Guess I'll set a course and go
In David Crosby's liner notes for the 1991 box set Crosby, Stills & Nash, he says this cryptic, apocalyptic, anti-war song was "Written in the main cabin of my boat, the Mayan. I had the music already [and Jefferson Airplane's] Paul Kanter wrote 2 verses, Stephen wrote one and I added the bits at both ends." He goes on to say that the songwriters "Imagined ourselves as the few survivors, escaping on a boat to create a new civilization."