I Was Not Born Here – © 2005 Richard Ruane

I was not born here

Another place can make that claim.

Some people start one place and then they roam

Not a native, I’m a migrant

But I’ve lived here most my life

This is where I mean when I say home

When I say home, it’s not a postcard in my mind

It’s the place where I’m now living

Not a place I left behind

When I say home, I know where I want to be

Everybody feels the need to have a home

And it’s not perfect,

There’s no perfection in this world

Everyone could find a thing that they would change

We could argue about the politics

The policies and all

But in the end what really matters would remain

When I say home, it’s not a postcard in my mind

It’s the place where I’m now living

Not a place I left behind

When I say home, I know where I want to be

Everybody feels the need to have a home

And I have family from Ireland,

From England and from Spain

I’ve maybe got some native blood and more

Five hundred years, a hundred years,

Some thousand years ago

We all were migrants who lived somewhere else before

When I say home, it’s not a postcard in my mind

It’s the place where I’m now living

Not a place I left behind

When I say home, I know where I want to be

Everybody feels the need to have a home

When I say home, it’s not a postcard in my mind

It’s the place where I’m now living

Not a place I left behind

When I say home, I know where I want to be

Everybody feels the need to have a home

Everybody feels the need

Everybody feels the need to have a home