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 or six miles to the last of the street lamps
And in the curb side dusk
out my thumb
In no hope at the ramshackle procession of home bound traffic
Success!
An ancient Mercedes '
The ubiquitous, Arab, shared drew up
I out my pockets and shrugged at the driver
" pas de l'argent "
" Venez! " A soft voice the back seat
The driver lent wearily and pushed open the back door
I stooped to 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
With one 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 we should bomb
Are we so sure mean us harm
Is our pleasure, punishment or crime
Is this a mountain that we want to climb
The road is hard, hard and
Put that two by four
This man would never you from his door
Oh George! Oh George!
That Texas must have fucked you up when you were very small

He beckoned with a small motion of his hand
Fingers together like a child goodbye
The driver put my old Hofner guitar in the with my rucksack
And off we
" etes Francais, monsieur? "
" Non, "
" Ah! "
" Est-ce que vous parlais Anglais, "
"Non, je regrette"
And so on
In talk between strangers, his French alien but correct
halting but eager to please
A lift, all, is a lift
Late moustache left us
And some miles later the dolmus at a crossroads lit by a single lightbulb
through 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 my guitar and rucksack at my feet
And waving away my thanks to the boot
Only to reappear with a pair of crutches
Which he leaned against the rear of the Mercedes.
He into the car and lifted my companion out
Only one leg, the second trouser leg neatly pinned beneath a hip
" Monsieur, si voulez, ca sera un honneur pour nous
Si vous venez avec moi a la maison manger avec ma femme "

When I was 17 my mother, bless her heart, fulfilled my dream
She me the keys to the car
We down to Paris, fuelled with Dexedrine and booze
Got bust in Antibes by the
And fleeced in Naples by the
But everyone was kind to us, we were the English
Our dads had them win the war
we all knew what we were fighting for
But now an abroad is just a US stooge
The is a poodle 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 swinging
No in sight
What the
"Merci monsieur"
"Bon, Venez!"
His faced in pleasure, he set off in front of me
Swinging his leg between the crutches with agonising
Up the dusty side road the darkness
After half an hour 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 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 creaked 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 carried on her back a shocking
I nodded and smiled back at her in greeting, for control
The gentleness between the one-legged man and his wife
too much for me

Is gentleness too for us
gentleness be filed along with empathy
We for someone else's child
Every time a bomb does its sums and gets it wrong
Someone else's child dies and in defence rise
America, America, please hear us when we
You got hip-hop, be-bop, hustle and
You got Finch
You got Jane
You got of speech
You got beaches, wildernesses and malls
let the might, the Christian right, fuck it all up
For you and the rest of the

They excitedly
She went to take his crutches in routine of
He chiding,
We have a
She embarrassed by her pas
Took my and laid them gently in the corner
"Du the?"
We sat on meagre in one corner of the single room
The floor was earth hard and by one wall a raised platform
six foot by four covered by a simple sheet, the bed
The hunchback herself with small copper pots over an open hearth
And us tea, hot and sweet
And so to
Flat, unleavened bread, +
in an iron skillet over the open hearth
Then folded and dipped into the soft of female sea urchins
My hostess did not eat, I ate her
She would hear of nothing else, I was guest
And then she retired behind a
And left the men to sit thimbles full of Arak
Carefully poured a small bottle with a faded label
Soon she reappeared,
Carrying in her arms their pride and joy, child.
I'd never a squint like that
So severe that as one eye looked out the other behind its nose

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

And so to bed, me is, not them
Of they slept on the floor behind a curtain
I lay awake all night on their earthen bed
Then came the dawn and their quiet stirrings
Careful not to wake the
I yawned in pretence
And took the proffered of water heated up and washed
And sipped my in its tiny cup
And then much "merci-ing" and bowing and shaking of hands
We left the woman to her
And we men our way back to the crossroads
The painful of our progress accentuated by the brilliant morning light
The dolmus duly
My host gave me one and leaning on the other
my hand and smiled
"Merci, monsieur," I
" De "
" And merci a votre femme, elle est tres "
Giving up his other
He himself to be folded into the back seat again
"Bon voyage, monsieur," he
And half bowed as the taxi headed towards the city
I North, my guitar over my shoulder
And the first hot of wind
Quickly dried the salt tears my young cheeks.