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 walked the 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 ramshackle of home bound traffic
Success!
An ancient Mercedes '
The ubiquitous, Arab, shared drew up
I turned out my and shrugged at the driver
" pas de l'argent "
" Venez! " A soft voice from the back
The driver lent wearily across and pushed open the back
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 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 they us harm
Is this our pleasure, or crime
Is this a mountain that we really to climb
The road is hard, hard and
Put down two by four
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 motion of his
Fingers like a child waving goodbye
The driver put my old guitar in the boot 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 alien but correct
Mine halting but eager to
A lift, after all, is a
moustache left us brusquely
And miles later the dolmus slowed 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 made no move to follow
The dumped my guitar and rucksack at my feet
And waving away my returned to the boot
Only to with a pair of alloy crutches
Which he leaned against the wing of the Mercedes.
He reached the car and lifted my companion out
Only one leg, the second trouser leg neatly pinned beneath a hip
" Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca sera un honneur nous
Si vous venez avec moi a la maison pour avec ma femme "

I was 17 my mother, bless her heart, fulfilled my summer dream
She me the keys 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 dudes
Our had helped them win the war
When we all knew what we fighting for
But now an Englishman abroad is a US stooge
The bulldog is a poodle snapping round the last refuge

"Ma femme", thank God! Monopod but not
The taxi drove off leaving us in the dim of the swinging bulb
No in sight
What the
"Merci monsieur"
"Bon, Venez!"
His creased in pleasure, he set off in front of me
his leg between the crutches with agonising care
Up the side road into the darkness
After half an hour we'd gone maybe a mile
When on the right I made out the low profile of a
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 of someone within
The door open and there, holding a biblical looking oil lamp
a squat, moustached woman, stooped smiling up at us
She aside to let us in and as she turned
I saw the for her stoop
She carried on her back a shocking
I and smiled back at her in greeting, fighting for control
The gentleness between the one-legged man and his monstrous
Almost too for me

Is gentleness too for us
Should gentleness be filed along with
We feel for someone else's
Every time a smart does its sums and gets 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 Atticus
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 rest of the

talked excitedly
She went to take his crutches in of care
He chiding,
We have a
She embarrassed by her pas
my things and laid them gently in the corner
"Du the?"
We sat on meagre in one corner of the single room
The was earth packed hard and by one wall a raised platform
Some six foot by covered by a simple sheet, the bed
The hunchback busied herself with small copper pots over an open
And us tea, hot and sweet
And so to
Flat, bread, + thin
in an iron skillet over the open hearth
Then folded and dipped 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 left the men to sit drinking full of Arak
poured from a small bottle with a faded label
Soon she reappeared,
Carrying in her arms their pride and joy, child.
I'd seen a squint like that
So severe that as one eye looked out the other 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 or the damned
Now we are Genghis Khan, Borghia, Son of Sam
In they took this child into their home
I wonder became of them
In the that was Lebanon
If I find them now, could I make amends?
How does the end?

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