Luyện nghe bài hát Leaving Beirut

So we left Beirut and I
He East to Baghdad and the rest of it
I set out
I the five or six miles to the last of the street lamps
And hunkered in the curb side
Holding out my
In no great hope at the ramshackle procession of home traffic
Success!
An Mercedes 'dolmus '
The ubiquitous, Arab, shared drew up
I out my pockets and shrugged at the driver
" pas de l'argent "
" Venez! " A soft voice from the back
The driver wearily 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 short sleeved pale blue shirt
With one biro in the breast
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 this our pleasure, or crime
Is a mountain that we really want to climb
The is hard, hard and long
Put down that two by
This man would never you from his door
Oh George! Oh George!
That Texas education must fucked you up when you were very small

He with a small arthritic 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 etes Francais, "
" Non, "
" Ah! "
" Est-ce que parlais Anglais, Monsieur? "
"Non, je regrette"
And so on
In talk between strangers, his French alien but correct
halting but eager to please
A lift, after all, is a
moustache left us brusquely
And some later the dolmus slowed at a crossroads lit by a single lightbulb
Swung through a U-turn and stopped in a of dust
I opened the and got out
But my benefactor made no move to
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 against the rear wing of the Mercedes.
He reached into the car and my companion out
Only one leg, the second trouser leg pinned beneath a vacant hip
" Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca un honneur pour nous
Si vous venez avec moi a la maison pour manger ma femme "

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

"Ma femme", God! Monopod but not queer
The taxi drove off us in the dim light of the swinging bulb
No building in
What the
"Merci monsieur"
"Bon, Venez!"
His faced creased in pleasure, he set off in of me
Swinging his leg between the crutches with agonising
Up the dusty side road 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 Arabic to announce our
And after some inside a lamp was lit
And the changing angle of light in the wide crack under the
the approach 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 back a hump
I nodded and smiled at her in greeting, fighting for control
The gentleness between the one-legged man and his wife
too much for me

Is gentleness too for us
Should be filed along with empathy
We feel for someone else's
Every time a smart bomb does its and gets it wrong
Someone else's child and equities in defence rise
America, America, please hear us 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 rest of the

talked excitedly
She to take his crutches in routine of care
He chiding,
We a guest
She embarrassed by her pas
Took my 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 wall a platform
six foot by four covered by a simple sheet, the bed
The hunchback busied herself with small copper pots over an 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 soft insides of female sea
My hostess did not eat, I ate her
She hear of nothing else, I was their guest
And then she retired behind a
And left the men to sit drinking thimbles of Arak
Carefully poured from a small bottle a faded label
Soon she reappeared,
Carrying in her their pride and joy, their child.
I'd seen a squint like that
So severe as one eye looked out the other disappeared behind its nose

Not in my name, Tony, you great war you
Terror is still terror, whosoever 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 into their home
I wonder what became of
In the that was Lebanon
If I could find them now, could I amends?
How does the story

And so to bed, me is, not them
Of course they slept on the floor a curtain
I lay awake all night on their earthen bed
Then came the dawn and then their quiet
Careful not to wake the
I in great pretence
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 our way back to the crossroads
The painful slowness of our accentuated by the brilliant morning light
The dolmus duly
My host gave me one crutch and leaning on the
Shook my and smiled
"Merci, monsieur," I
" De "
" And a votre femme, elle est tres gentille "
up his other 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 turned North, my over my shoulder
And the first hot gust of
Quickly the salt tears from my young cheeks.