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 walked the five or six miles to the last of the lamps
And in the curb side dusk
out my thumb
In no great hope at the ramshackle procession of bound traffic
Success!
An ancient Mercedes '
The ubiquitous, Arab, taxi drew up
I turned out my pockets and shrugged at the
" pas de l'argent "
" Venez! " A soft voice from the back
The driver lent wearily 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 sleeved pale blue cotton shirt
With one in the breast pocket
A clerk maybe, 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 bomb
Are we so sure they us harm
Is our pleasure, punishment or crime
Is this a mountain that we really want to
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 have fucked you up when you were very small

He beckoned with a small motion of his hand
Fingers like a child waving goodbye
The driver put my old Hofner guitar in the 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 French but correct
Mine halting but eager to
A lift, after all, is a
Late moustache left us
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 no move to follow
The driver dumped my guitar and rucksack at my
And waving away my thanks returned to the
Only to reappear a pair of alloy crutches
Which he against the rear wing of the Mercedes.
He reached the car and lifted my companion out
Only one leg, the second trouser leg neatly beneath a vacant hip
" Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca sera un honneur pour
Si venez avec moi a la maison pour manger avec ma femme "

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

"Ma femme", thank God! Monopod but not
The drove off leaving us in the dim light of the swinging bulb
No building in
the hell
"Merci monsieur"
"Bon, Venez!"
His faced in pleasure, he set off in front of me
his leg between the crutches with agonising care
Up the dusty side road into the
After half an we'd gone maybe half a mile
When on the I made out the low profile of a building
He called out in to announce our arrival
And after some inside a lamp was lit
And the changing angle of in the wide crack under the door
Signalled the of someone within
The door creaked and there, holding a biblical looking oil lamp
Stood a squat, moustached woman, stooped up at us
She stood to let us in and as she turned
I saw the for her stoop
She on her back 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 along with empathy
We for someone else's child
Every time a smart bomb does its sums and it wrong
Someone child dies and equities in defence rise
America, America, hear us when we call
You got hip-hop, be-bop, hustle and
You got Finch
You got Russell
You got freedom of
You got great beaches, and malls
let the might, the Christian right, fuck it all up
For you and the of the world

They talked
She went to take his in routine of care
He chiding,
We have a
She embarrassed by her pas
Took my things and laid 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 wall a raised
Some six foot by covered by a simple sheet, the bed
The hunchback busied herself with small 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 into the soft insides of female sea urchins
My hostess did not eat, I ate her
She would hear of else, I was their guest
And then she retired behind a
And the men to sit drinking thimbles full of Arak
Carefully poured from a small bottle with a faded
she reappeared, radiant
Carrying in her their pride and joy, their child.
I'd seen a squint 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 still terror, gets to frame the rules
History's not 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 became of them
In the cauldron was Lebanon
If I find them now, could I make amends?
How does the story

And so to bed, me is, not them
Of course slept on the floor behind a curtain
Whilst I lay all night on their earthen bed
Then came the dawn and then their stirrings
Careful not to the guest
I in great pretence
And took the bowl of water heated up and washed
And sipped my coffee in its cup
And then with "merci-ing" and bowing and shaking of hands
We the woman to her chores
And we men our way back to the crossroads
The painful slowness of our 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 "
Giving up his crutch
He allowed himself to be into the back seat again
"Bon voyage, monsieur," he
And half as the taxi headed south towards the city
I North, my guitar over my shoulder
And the first hot of wind
Quickly dried the salt tears my young cheeks.