How have you been, my darling children
  While I have been away in the west
  Though you are strangers I feel like I know you
  By the way that you treat me and offer to feed me
  And eagerly ask if I´ll stay for a rest
  
  Now sit yourself down in a pile here before me
  I wish I had presents for each of your smiles
  But I have been travelling without much to carry
  Just a broken guitar case with tape on the side
  A bag and a few signs to help me get rides
  
  But here are some beads from the throat of a princess
  Who reigned in the years round two hundred B.C.
  Divide them and wear them and make sure to share them
  Cause I want you to have them in hopes that you´ll be
  As lovely as the lady who gave them to me
  
  And here is a strange European guitar string
  I found on the floor of a club in Marseilles
  It´s fat for the third string and skinny for the fourth string
  But I kept it in hopes that I´d use it some day
  It´s funny how people just do things that way
  
  And here is a turtle from the Long Island Expressway
  He says that his home has been covered with tar
  So I gave him a ride on the back of my suitcase
  And he says that he´d like to stay here in your yard
  At long last his life won´t be quite so hard
  
  How have you been, my darling children
  While I have been away in the west
  Though you are strangers I feel like I know you
  By the way that you treat me and offer to feed me
  And eagerly ask if I´ll stay for a rest