Luyện nghe bài hát Leaving Beirut

So we Beirut Willa and I
He headed East to and the rest of it
I set out
I the five or six miles to the last of the street lamps
And hunkered in the side dusk
out my thumb
In no great at the ramshackle procession of home bound traffic
Success!
An ancient 'dolmus '
The ubiquitous, Arab, taxi drew up
I out my pockets and shrugged at the driver
" J'ai pas de "
" Venez! " A voice from the back seat
The driver lent wearily across and pushed open the door
I stooped to look at the two men there
One besuited, bespectacled, moustached, irritated, distant,
The other, the one who had spoken,
Frail, fifty five-ish, bald, sallow, in a short sleeved pale blue cotton
one biro in the breast pocket
A clerk maybe, sunken in the seat
"Venez!" He said again, and
"Mais pas de l'argent"
"Oui, Oui, d'accord, Venez!"

Are these the people that we bomb
Are we so they mean us harm
Is our pleasure, punishment or crime
Is this a mountain that we want to climb
The is hard, hard and long
Put down that two by
This man never turn you from his door
Oh George! Oh George!
That Texas education must have fucked you up you were very small

He beckoned with a arthritic motion of his hand
together like a child waving goodbye
The driver put my old Hofner guitar in the boot my rucksack
And off we
" Vous etes Francais, "
" Non, "
" Ah! "
" Est-ce que vous Anglais, Monsieur? "
"Non, je regrette"
And so on
In talk between strangers, his French alien but correct
Mine halting but to please
A lift, after all, is a
Late left us brusquely
And some miles later the dolmus slowed at a crossroads lit by a lightbulb
Swung through a U-turn and stopped in a of dust
I the door and got out
But my benefactor made no move to
The driver dumped my and rucksack at my feet
And waving away my returned to the boot
Only to with a pair of alloy crutches
Which he leaned against the rear of the Mercedes.
He reached into the car and lifted my out
Only one leg, the second trouser leg neatly beneath a vacant hip
" Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca sera un pour nous
Si vous venez moi a la maison pour manger avec ma femme "

I was 17 my mother, bless her heart, fulfilled my summer dream
She me the keys to the car
We motored down to Paris, fuelled Dexedrine and booze
Got bust in by the cops
And fleeced in Naples by the
But everyone was to us, we were the English dudes
Our had helped them win the war
we all knew what we were fighting for
But now an abroad is just a US stooge
The bulldog is a poodle round the scoundrel's last refuge

"Ma femme", thank God! but not queer
The taxi drove off leaving us in the dim of the swinging bulb
No in sight
What the
"Merci monsieur"
"Bon, Venez!"
His faced creased in pleasure, he set off in of me
Swinging his leg between the crutches with agonising
Up the dusty road into the darkness
After half an hour we'd gone maybe a mile
When on the right I made out the low profile of a
He called out in to announce our arrival
And after some scuffling inside a was lit
And the changing of light in the wide crack under the door
Signalled the of someone within
The door creaked open and there, holding a biblical looking oil
Stood a squat, woman, stooped smiling up at us
She aside to let us in and as she turned
I saw the for her stoop
She carried on her a shocking hump
I nodded and back at her in greeting, fighting for control
The gentleness between the one-legged man and his monstrous
too much for me

Is gentleness too for us
Should gentleness be filed with empathy
We feel for someone child
Every time a bomb does its sums and gets it wrong
Someone else's child dies and equities in defence
America, America, please hear us when we
You got hip-hop, be-bop, hustle and
You got Atticus
You got Jane
You got freedom of
You got beaches, wildernesses and malls
Don't let the might, the Christian right, it all up
For you and the of the world

They talked
She to take his crutches in routine of care
He chiding,
We a guest
She by her faux pas
my things and laid them gently in the corner
"Du the?"
We sat on meagre cushions in one corner of the single
The floor was earth hard and by one wall a raised platform
Some six foot by four covered by a sheet, the bed
The hunchback busied herself with small copper pots over an open
And brought us tea, hot and
And so to
Flat, bread, + thin
Cooked in an iron skillet over the open
Then and dipped into the soft insides of female sea urchins
My did not eat, I ate her dinner
She would of nothing else, I was their guest
And she retired behind a curtain
And the men to sit drinking thimbles full of Arak
Carefully from a small bottle with a faded label
she reappeared, radiant
Carrying in her arms their pride and joy, child.
I'd never seen a squint that
So severe as one eye looked out the other disappeared behind its nose

Not in my name, Tony, you war leader you
Terror is still terror, whosoever gets to the rules
History's not written by the or the damned
Now we are Genghis Khan, Borghia, Son of Sam
In 1961 they took this child into their
I wonder what of them
In the cauldron that was
If I could them now, could I make amends?
How the story end?

And so to bed, me that is, not
Of course slept on the floor behind a curtain
Whilst I lay awake all night on earthen bed
Then came the dawn and then their quiet
Careful not to the guest
I yawned in great
And took the bowl of water heated up and washed
And my coffee in its tiny cup
And then with much "merci-ing" and and shaking of hands
We left the woman to her
And we men made our way back to the
The painful slowness of our progress accentuated by the brilliant light
The dolmus reappeared
My host gave me one crutch and on the other
Shook my hand and
"Merci, monsieur," I
" De "
" And merci a femme, elle est tres gentille "
Giving up his other
He himself to be folded into the back seat again
"Bon voyage, monsieur," he
And half bowed as the headed south towards the city
I turned North, my guitar my shoulder
And the first hot gust of
Quickly dried the salt from my young cheeks.