Luyện nghe bài hát Leaving Beirut

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

Are these the people that we should
Are we so they mean us harm
Is our pleasure, punishment or crime
Is this a that we really want to climb
The road is hard, hard and
Put down two by four
This man would turn you from his door
Oh George! Oh George!
That Texas education have fucked you up when you were very small

He with a small arthritic motion of his hand
Fingers together like a child waving
The driver put my old Hofner in the boot with my rucksack
And off we
" Vous etes Francais, "
" Non, "
" Ah! "
" que vous parlais Anglais, Monsieur? "
"Non, je regrette"
And so on
In talk between strangers, his French alien but correct
Mine but eager to please
A lift, all, is a lift
Late moustache us brusquely
And some later the dolmus slowed at a crossroads lit by a single lightbulb
Swung a U-turn and stopped in a cloud of dust
I the door and got out
But my made no move to follow
The driver my guitar and rucksack at my feet
And away my thanks returned to the boot
Only to reappear with a of alloy crutches
Which he leaned the rear wing of the Mercedes.
He into the car and lifted my companion out
Only one leg, the second leg neatly pinned beneath a vacant hip
" Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca sera un honneur pour
Si vous venez avec moi a la pour manger avec ma femme "

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

"Ma femme", God! Monopod but not queer
The taxi drove off leaving us in the dim light of the swinging
No building in
the hell
"Merci monsieur"
"Bon, Venez!"
His faced creased in pleasure, he set off in of me
Swinging his leg the crutches with agonising care
Up the dusty side into the darkness
After an hour we'd gone maybe half a mile
When on the right I out the low profile of a building
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
the approach of someone within
The door creaked open and there, holding a looking oil lamp
Stood a squat, moustached woman, stooped up at us
She stood aside to let us in and as she
I saw the reason for her
She carried on her back a shocking
I nodded and smiled back at her in greeting, fighting for
The gentleness the one-legged man and his monstrous wife
Almost too for me

Is gentleness too for us
Should gentleness be filed along empathy
We feel for someone else's
Every time a smart bomb does its sums and it wrong
Someone else's child dies and in defence rise
America, America, please hear us when we
You got hip-hop, be-bop, and bustle
You got Finch
You got Jane
You got freedom of
You got great beaches, and malls
Don't let the might, the right, fuck it all up
For you and the rest of the

talked excitedly
She went to take his crutches in 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 of the single room
The floor was earth packed hard and by one a raised platform
Some six foot by four covered by a sheet, the bed
The hunchback busied herself with copper pots over an open hearth
And brought us tea, hot and
And so to
Flat, unleavened bread, +
Cooked in an iron skillet over the open
Then folded and dipped into the insides of female sea urchins
My hostess did not eat, I ate her
She would hear of nothing else, I was guest
And then she retired behind a
And left the men to sit drinking thimbles full of
Carefully poured from a small with a faded label
Soon she reappeared,
Carrying in her their pride and joy, their child.
I'd never seen a like that
So severe that as one eye looked out the other disappeared behind its

Not in my name, Tony, you great war you
Terror is terror, whosoever gets to frame the rules
History's not written by the vanquished or the
Now we are Khan, Lucretia Borghia, Son of Sam
In 1961 they this child into their home
I what became of them
In the cauldron was Lebanon
If I could find them now, could I make
How the story end?

And so to bed, me is, not them
Of they slept on the floor behind a curtain
Whilst I lay awake all night on earthen bed
Then the dawn and then their quiet stirrings
not to wake the guest
I yawned in pretence
And took the proffered of water heated up and washed
And sipped my in its tiny cup
And then with much "merci-ing" and and shaking of hands
We left the to her chores
And we men made our way to the crossroads
The painful slowness of our progress accentuated by the morning light
The duly reappeared
My host gave me one crutch and leaning on the
my hand and smiled
"Merci, monsieur," I
" De "
" And merci a votre femme, elle est gentille "
Giving up his crutch
He allowed himself to be folded into the back again
"Bon voyage, monsieur," he
And half bowed as the taxi headed south the city
I North, my guitar over my shoulder
And the first hot gust of
Quickly dried the salt from my young cheeks.