Luyện nghe bài hát Leaving Beirut

So we left Willa and I
He headed East to and the rest of it
I set out
I walked the five or six miles to the last of the lamps
And hunkered in the curb dusk
Holding out my
In no great hope at the ramshackle procession of home traffic
Success!
An ancient Mercedes '
The ubiquitous, Arab, shared drew up
I turned out my pockets and shrugged at the
" J'ai pas de "
" Venez! " A soft voice from the back
The lent wearily across and pushed open the back door
I to look inside 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 pale blue cotton shirt
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 sure they us harm
Is our pleasure, punishment or crime
Is a mountain that we really want to climb
The is hard, hard and long
Put down two by four
This man would 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 small arthritic of his hand
Fingers together like a waving goodbye
The driver put my old Hofner in the boot with my rucksack
And off we
" Vous Francais, monsieur? "
" Non, "
" Ah! "
" Est-ce que parlais Anglais, Monsieur? "
"Non, je regrette"
And so on
In small talk between strangers, his alien but correct
halting but eager to please
A lift, all, is a lift
Late moustache left us
And some later the dolmus slowed at a crossroads lit by a single lightbulb
Swung through a and stopped in a cloud of dust
I the door and got out
But my benefactor made no to follow
The driver dumped my guitar and at my feet
And waving my thanks returned to the boot
Only to with a pair of alloy crutches
Which he leaned against the wing of the Mercedes.
He reached the car and lifted my companion out
one leg, the second trouser leg neatly pinned beneath a vacant hip
" Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca un honneur pour nous
Si vous venez avec moi a la maison pour avec ma femme "

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

"Ma femme", God! Monopod but not queer
The taxi off leaving us in the dim light of the swinging bulb
No in sight
the hell
"Merci monsieur"
"Bon, Venez!"
His creased in pleasure, he set off in front of me
Swinging his leg between the crutches with agonising
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 out in Arabic to announce our arrival
And after some scuffling inside a was lit
And the changing angle of in the wide crack under the door
the approach of someone within
The door creaked open and there, holding a biblical looking oil
a squat, moustached woman, stooped smiling up at us
She aside to let us in and as she turned
I saw the reason for her
She carried on her a shocking hump
I and smiled back at her in greeting, fighting for control
The gentleness the one-legged man and his monstrous wife
Almost too for me

Is too much for us
Should gentleness be filed along empathy
We feel for else's child
Every time a smart bomb does its sums and gets it
Someone child dies and equities in defence rise
America, America, please hear us when we
You got hip-hop, be-bop, and bustle
You got Atticus
You got Jane
You got of speech
You got great beaches, wildernesses and
let the might, the Christian right, fuck it all up
For you and the of the world

talked excitedly
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 in one corner of the single room
The was earth packed hard and by one wall a raised platform
Some six by four covered by a simple sheet, the bed
The hunchback busied herself with small copper over an open hearth
And brought us tea, hot and
And so to
Flat, unleavened bread, +
in an iron skillet over the open hearth
Then folded and dipped 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 left the men to sit drinking thimbles of Arak
poured from a small bottle with a faded label
Soon she reappeared,
Carrying in her arms pride and joy, their child.
I'd never seen a squint like
So severe that as one eye out the other disappeared behind its nose

Not in my name, Tony, you war leader you
is still terror, whosoever gets to frame the rules
History's not written by the or the damned
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 does the story

And so to bed, me that is, not
Of course they slept on the floor behind a
Whilst I lay all night on their earthen bed
Then came the dawn and then their quiet
Careful not to wake the
I yawned in great
And the proffered bowl of water heated up and washed
And sipped my coffee in its cup
And then with much "merci-ing" and bowing and 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 brilliant light
The dolmus reappeared
My host me one crutch and leaning on the other
Shook my hand and
"Merci, monsieur," I
" De "
" And a votre femme, elle est tres gentille "
up his other crutch
He allowed himself to be folded into the back again
"Bon voyage, monsieur," he
And half bowed as the taxi headed south towards the
I turned North, my over my shoulder
And the first hot of wind
Quickly the salt tears from my young cheeks.