So far from the Clyde

This is a song on Get Lucky, Knopfler's latest album. While the album itself is fabulous (as always), there is this particular song that really touched me. Here are the lyrics of that song, 'So Far From The Clyde':

They had a last supper the day of the beaching
She's a dead ship sailing - skeleton crew
The galley is empty the stove pots are cooling
With what's left of a stew
Her time is approaching the captain moves over
The hangman steps in to do what he's paid for
With the wind and the tide she goes proud ahead steaming
And he drives her hard into the shore
So far from the Clyde
Together we'd ride
We did ride

As if to a wave from her bows to her rudder
Bravely she rises to meet with the land
Under their feet they all feel her keel shudder
A shallow sea washes their hands
Later the captain shakes hands with the hangman
And climbs slowly down to the oily wet ground
Goes bowed to the car that has come here to take him
Through the graveyard and back to the town
So far from the Clyde
Together we'd ride
We did ride

They pull out her cables and hack off her hatches
Too poor to be wasteful with pity or time
They swarm on her carcass with torches and axes
Like a whale on the bloody shoreline
Stripped of her pillars her stays and her stanchions
When there's only her bones on the wet, poisoned land
Steel ropes will drag her with winches and engines
'Til there's only a stain on the sand
So far from the Clyde
Together we'd ride
We did ride
So far from the Clyde
Together we'd ride
We did ride

I love the visual imagery that this song evokes. When I heard the song for the first time, that was all I had. Then, when I read the lyrics and the sleevenotes, I couldn't help but marvel at how Mark time and again manages to make music out of things that really are extremely common-place. Here are his sleevenotes:

"Glasgow and Newcastle were shipbuilding towns and world famous for engineering excellence. As a child I'd lie in bed at night and listen to the foghorns. A breaking yard in India is a long way for a beautiful Clyde-built ship to go to die. I read about such a place in a magazine and began to write So Far From The Clyde soon afterwards."

Amazing. Nothing short of that.