Luyện nghe bài hát Leaving Beirut

So we Beirut Willa and I
He headed East to Baghdad and the of it
I set out
I the five or six miles to the last of the street lamps
And in the curb side dusk
out my thumb
In no great hope at the procession of home bound traffic
Success!
An ancient 'dolmus '
The ubiquitous, Arab, shared taxi up
I turned out my pockets and at the driver
" pas de l'argent "
" Venez! " A soft voice the back seat
The driver lent across and pushed open the back 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 sleeved pale blue cotton shirt
one biro in the breast pocket
A clerk maybe, slightly 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 they us harm
Is our pleasure, punishment or crime
Is this a mountain we really want to climb
The is hard, hard and long
Put down that two by
This man would never turn you from his
Oh George! Oh George!
That Texas education must fucked you up when 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 guitar in the with my rucksack
And off we
" Vous etes Francais, "
" Non, "
" Ah! "
" Est-ce que vous parlais Anglais, "
"Non, je regrette"
And so on
In small talk between strangers, his French but correct
halting but eager to please
A lift, after all, is a
Late moustache us brusquely
And some miles later the dolmus 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 benefactor made no move to
The driver my guitar and rucksack at my feet
And waving away my thanks to the boot
Only to reappear with a of alloy crutches
Which he leaned the rear 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 pour nous
Si vous avec moi a la maison 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 down to Paris, fuelled with Dexedrine and booze
Got in Antibes by the cops
And fleeced in Naples by the
But everyone was to us, we were the English dudes
Our dads had helped win the war
we all knew what we were fighting for
But now an Englishman abroad is just a US
The bulldog is a snapping round the scoundrel's last refuge

"Ma femme", thank God! Monopod but not
The taxi drove off leaving us in the dim light of the swinging
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 care
Up the dusty side into the darkness
After half an hour we'd gone maybe half a
When on the right I made out the low of a building
He called out in Arabic to our arrival
And some scuffling inside a lamp was lit
And the angle of light in the wide crack under the door
Signalled the of someone within
The door creaked and there, holding a biblical looking oil lamp
a squat, moustached woman, stooped smiling up at us
She stood aside to let us in and as she
I saw the for her stoop
She carried on her a shocking hump
I nodded and smiled back at her in greeting, fighting for
The gentleness the one-legged man and his monstrous wife
too much for me

Is gentleness too 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 else's child dies and in defence rise
America, America, hear us when we call
You got hip-hop, be-bop, hustle and
You got Finch
You got Jane
You got of speech
You got beaches, wildernesses and malls
Don't let the might, the right, fuck it all up
For you and the of the world

They talked
She went to take his crutches in of care
He chiding,
We a guest
She embarrassed by her pas
Took my things and laid them gently in the
"Du the?"
We sat on meagre cushions in one corner of the single
The floor was earth packed and by one wall a raised platform
Some six foot by covered by a simple sheet, the bed
The hunchback busied herself with copper pots over an open hearth
And brought us tea, hot and
And so to
Flat, bread, + thin
Cooked in an iron 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 hear of nothing else, I was their
And then she behind a curtain
And left the men to sit drinking thimbles of Arak
Carefully from a small bottle with a faded label
Soon she reappeared,
Carrying in her 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 great war you
Terror is still terror, gets to frame the rules
not written by the vanquished or the damned
Now we are Genghis Khan, Borghia, Son of Sam
In 1961 they took this child their home
I wonder what became of
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 behind a curtain
Whilst I lay all night on their earthen bed
Then came the dawn and then their quiet
not to wake the guest
I in great pretence
And took the proffered bowl of heated up and washed
And my coffee in its tiny cup
And then with much "merci-ing" and and shaking of hands
We the woman to her chores
And we men made our way back to the
The painful of our progress accentuated by the brilliant morning light
The dolmus duly
My host me one crutch and leaning on the other
my hand and smiled
"Merci, monsieur," I
" De "
" And merci a votre femme, est tres gentille "
up his other crutch
He allowed himself to be folded into the back seat
"Bon voyage, monsieur," he
And half bowed as the taxi headed south the city
I turned North, my guitar my shoulder
And the first hot gust of
Quickly dried the tears from my young cheeks.