Luyện nghe bài hát Leaving Beirut

So we left Willa and I
He East to Baghdad and the rest of it
I set out
I walked the five or six to the last of the street lamps
And hunkered in the side dusk
Holding out my
In no great hope at the ramshackle procession of home bound
Success!
An Mercedes 'dolmus '
The ubiquitous, Arab, taxi drew up
I out my pockets and shrugged at the driver
" J'ai pas de "
" Venez! " A soft voice the back seat
The driver wearily across 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, five-ish, bald, sallow, in a short sleeved pale blue cotton shirt
With one biro in the 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 we should bomb
Are we so sure they mean us
Is our pleasure, punishment or crime
Is this a that we really want to climb
The is hard, hard and long
Put down two by four
This man never turn you from his door
Oh George! Oh George!
That Texas must have fucked you up when you were very small

He with a small arthritic motion of his hand
Fingers together like a child waving
The driver put my old Hofner guitar in the boot with my
And off we
" Vous etes Francais, "
" Non, "
" Ah! "
" Est-ce que vous parlais Anglais, "
"Non, je regrette"
And so on
In small between strangers, his French alien but correct
Mine halting but to please
A lift, after all, is a
moustache left us brusquely
And some miles later the dolmus slowed at a crossroads lit by a single
through 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 dumped my guitar and 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 reached into the car and lifted my out
Only one leg, the second trouser leg neatly pinned beneath a hip
" Monsieur, si vous voulez, ca sera un honneur pour
Si vous venez avec moi a la maison manger avec ma femme "

When I was 17 my mother, her heart, fulfilled my summer dream
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 Naples by the
But everyone was to us, we were the English dudes
Our dads had helped win the war
When we all what we were fighting for
But now an abroad 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
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 dusty side road into the
After half an hour we'd gone maybe a mile
on the right I made out the low profile of a building
He called out in Arabic to our arrival
And some scuffling 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 open and there, holding a looking oil lamp
Stood a squat, moustached woman, stooped up at us
She stood aside to let us in and as she
I saw the reason for her
She on her back a shocking hump
I nodded and smiled back at her in greeting, fighting for
The gentleness between the man and his monstrous wife
too much for me

Is gentleness too for us
Should gentleness be filed along with
We feel for else's child
Every a smart bomb does its sums 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, 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 of the world

talked excitedly
She went to his crutches in routine of care
He chiding,
We a guest
She embarrassed by her pas
Took my things and laid them in the corner
"Du the?"
We sat on meagre in one corner of the single room
The floor was earth packed and by one wall a raised platform
six foot by four covered by a simple sheet, the bed
The hunchback busied herself with small copper pots over an hearth
And us tea, hot and sweet
And so to
Flat, bread, + thin
Cooked in an iron skillet the open hearth
folded and dipped into 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 retired behind a
And left the men to sit drinking full of Arak
Carefully poured from a small with a faded label
she reappeared, radiant
Carrying in her arms their and joy, their child.
I'd never seen a 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, whosoever gets to frame the
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 floor behind a
Whilst I lay awake all night on earthen bed
Then came the dawn and then quiet stirrings
Careful not to the guest
I yawned in pretence
And took the proffered bowl of water up and washed
And my coffee in its tiny cup
And then with "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 slowness of our progress accentuated by the brilliant light
The dolmus duly
My host me one crutch and leaning on the other
Shook my and smiled
"Merci, monsieur," I
" De "
" And merci a femme, elle est tres gentille "
Giving up his crutch
He allowed to be folded into the back seat again
"Bon voyage, monsieur," he
And half bowed as the taxi headed south the city
I North, my guitar over my shoulder
And the first hot of wind
Quickly dried the salt from my young cheeks.