I don't want to go back to Mejillones,
On the dusty Chile shore;
I don't want to go back to Mejillones,
Where they load the copper ore;
I don't want to go back to Mejillones,
Never no more.
It ain't because there's no decent drinks there,
Of any sort or kind;
It ain't because there's only sand and stinks there,
And the cold snows behind.
It ain't because it's mostly hot as blazes,
Though it's all o' that, Lord knows!
It ain't along o' the thirst a feller aises,
In them dry winds that blows.
It ain't because I got shoved in the jug there
To finish up a spree,
And sampled every blooming breed of bug there,
As a man could hope to see.
It's because I don't want to mooch around alone there,
Where the tin roofs crackle in the sun;
Thinking of the fun I've had and chaps I've know there,
In an old ship that's gone,
Likes a blooming walking ghost in Mejillones,
Now the ship's gone and the men . . .
And that's why I ain't going back to Mejillones,
Never again!
Notes
From SAILOR'S DELIGHT, edited by Cicely Fox Smith, published by Methuen & Co., London, UK, © 1931, pp. 98-99.
"You can't go back!" is a common theme in many poems and if you do "go back" there is often the disquieting familiarity of some of what you see combined with the absence of what you remember. The poet never returned to Victoria, British Colombia, where she spent 9 of her younger formative years but she thought about returning there in "Pacific Coast" as well as other poems.
Charley Noble
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