Luyện nghe bài hát Leaving Beirut

So we left Willa and I
He headed East to Baghdad and the of it
I set out
I walked the five or six to the last of the street lamps
And hunkered in the curb dusk
out my thumb
In no great hope at the ramshackle procession of bound traffic
Success!
An ancient Mercedes '
The ubiquitous, Arab, shared taxi up
I out my pockets and shrugged at the driver
" J'ai pas de "
" Venez! " A soft voice the back seat
The driver lent wearily across and pushed 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 sleeved blue cotton shirt
one biro in the breast pocket
A maybe, slightly 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 should
Are we so sure mean us harm
Is this our pleasure, or crime
Is this a mountain that we want to climb
The road is hard, hard and
Put down two by four
This man never turn you from his door
Oh George! Oh George!
That Texas education have fucked you up when you were very small

He beckoned a small arthritic motion of his hand
Fingers together like a child goodbye
The driver put my old guitar in the boot with my rucksack
And off we
" etes Francais, monsieur? "
" Non, "
" Ah! "
" Est-ce que vous parlais Anglais, "
"Non, je regrette"
And so on
In small talk between strangers, his French but correct
Mine halting but to please
A lift, all, is a lift
Late moustache left us
And miles later the dolmus slowed at a crossroads lit by a single lightbulb
Swung through a U-turn and stopped in a cloud of
I the door and got out
But my benefactor made no move to
The driver my guitar and rucksack at my feet
And waving away my thanks returned to the
Only to reappear with a pair of crutches
Which he leaned against the wing of the Mercedes.
He reached into the car and my companion out
Only one leg, the second leg neatly pinned beneath a vacant hip
" Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca sera un honneur nous
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 bust in by the cops
And fleeced in Naples by the
But was kind to us, we were the English dudes
Our dads had helped win the war
When we all knew we were fighting for
But now an abroad is just a US stooge
The bulldog is a snapping round the scoundrel's last refuge

"Ma femme", thank God! but not queer
The taxi drove off leaving us in the dim light of the bulb
No building in
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 side road into the darkness
After half an hour we'd gone maybe half a
When on the I made out the low profile of a building
He called out in to announce our arrival
And some scuffling inside a lamp was lit
And the angle of light in the wide crack under the door
Signalled the approach of within
The door open and there, holding a biblical looking oil lamp
Stood a squat, moustached woman, smiling up at us
She stood aside to let us in and as she
I saw the for her stoop
She on her back a shocking hump
I nodded and 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 along with empathy
We feel for someone else's
Every time a bomb does its sums and gets it wrong
Someone else's child dies and equities in defence
America, America, hear us when we call
You got hip-hop, be-bop, and bustle
You got Finch
You got Jane
You got of speech
You got great beaches, and malls
Don't let the might, the right, fuck it all up
For you and the of the world

talked excitedly
She went to take his crutches in of care
He chiding,
We a guest
She embarrassed by her pas
Took my things and laid gently in the corner
"Du the?"
We sat on meagre cushions in one corner of the room
The floor was earth packed 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, unleavened bread, +
Cooked in an iron skillet over the hearth
Then folded and dipped into the soft insides of sea urchins
My hostess did not eat, I ate her
She would hear of nothing else, I was guest
And then she behind a curtain
And left the men to sit drinking thimbles of Arak
Carefully poured from a small bottle a faded label
Soon she reappeared,
in her arms their pride and joy, their child.
I'd seen a squint like that
So that 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 frame the
History's not written by the vanquished or the
Now we are Khan, Lucretia Borghia, Son of Sam
In 1961 they took this child into home
I wonder what of them
In the cauldron that was
If I could find them now, could I amends?
How does the story

And so to bed, me that is, not
Of course they slept on the floor behind a
I lay awake all night on their earthen bed
Then came the dawn and then their quiet
not to wake the guest
I yawned in great
And took the proffered bowl of heated up and washed
And sipped my in its tiny cup
And then with much "merci-ing" and bowing and shaking of
We left the to her chores
And we men made our way to the crossroads
The painful slowness of our accentuated by the brilliant morning light
The dolmus reappeared
My host gave me one crutch and on the other
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 into the back seat again
"Bon voyage, monsieur," he
And half bowed as the taxi headed south towards the
I turned North, my guitar my shoulder
And the first hot gust of
Quickly dried the salt tears my young cheeks.