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It's raining today and I'm just about to forget the train window girl
That wonderful day we met
She smiles through the smoke from my cigarette
It's raining today
But once there was summer and you
And dark little rooms
And sleep in late afternoons
Those moments descend on my windowpane
I've hung around here too long
Listenin' to the old landlady's hard-luck stories
You out of me me out of you
We go like lovers
To replace the empty space
Repeat our dreams to someone new
It's raining today
And I watch the cellophane streets
No hang-ups for me
'Cause hang-ups need company
The street corner girl's a cold trembling leaf
It's raining today
It's raining today
______________________________
She stands all alone
You can hear her hum softly
From her fire escape in the sky
She fills the bags 'neath her eyes
With the moonbeams
And cries 'cause the world's passed her by
Didn't time sounds sweet yesterday?
In a world filled with friends
You lose your way
She's a haunted house
And her windows are broken
And the sad young man's gone away
Her bathrobe's torn
And tears smudge her lipstick
And the neighbors just whisper all day
Didn't time sounds sweet yesterday?
In a world filled with friends You lose your way
It's your bicycle bells and you
Rembrandt swells
Your children alive and still breathing
And your look of loss when you're coming across
Makes me feel like a thief when you're bleeding
Duchess Duchess
Light up your candles for me
Duchess Duchess
Put all your love back in me
I come listening
I touch touching
With the Persian sea running through your veins
You shed your names with the seasons
Still they all return with the last remains
And they lay them before you like reasons
With your shimmering dress it says no it says yes
It says I've nothing left for conceiving
Its your shiftless flesh and your old girls grace
Its your young girls face that I'm breathing
Duchess Duchess
Light up your candles for me
Duchess Duchess Duchess
Put all the love back in me
I am lying she is crying
The Angels of Ashes will give back your passions
Again and again
Their light shafts will reach through the darkness and touch you my friend
They'll fly in a mind dance and blind you with wings wrapped in flame
If you're down to an echo they just might remember your name
In the unbroken darkness where emptiness empties alone
There's no starting or stopping where there is no right or no wrong
Well that's all right for some who can hang the absurd on their wall
If your blind hands can't grope through these measureless waters you'll
fall
You've been following patterns and fleeting sensations too long
And the fullness that fills up the pulse of durations is gone
Let the great constellation of flickering ashes be heard
Let them burn with a fire all it takes to confess is a word, just a word
I can recommend angels I've watched as they've made a man strong
Oh so strong If your humbleness shows then I'm sure that they'll take you
along
You can tell them who sent you it might help to get you above
You can say that he laughed and he walked like St. Francis
With love
The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinst Regime) (Engel)
I seen a hand I seen a vision
It was reaching through the clouds
To risk a dream
A shadow cross the sky
And it crushed into the ground
Just like a beast
The old man's back again
The old man's back again
I seen a woman standing in the snow
She was silent as she watched them take her man
Teardrops burned her cheeks for she thought she'd heard
The shadow had left this land
The old man's back again
The old man's back again
The crowds just gathered their faces turned away
And they queue all day like dragons of disgust
All the women whispering
Wondering just what these young hot-heads want of us
And entres vie he cries with eyes that ring like chimes
His anti-worlds go spinning through his head
He burns them in his dreams for half awake they may as well be dead
The old man's back again
I see he's back again
I see a soldier
He's standing in the rain
For him there's no old man to walk behind
Devoured by his pain bewildered by the faces who pass him by
He'd like another name the one he's got's a curse
These people cried
Why can't they understand
His mother called him Ivan then she died
The old man's back again
The old man's back again
I can see him back again
Wasn't it a good year
Wasn't filled with talking
It still moves through my heart
From time to time
City after city
Granite gray as morning
Heroes died in subways left behind far behind like our love
You're on your own again
And you're your best again
That's what you tell yourself I see it all the way as far as anyone can
see
Except when it began
I was so happy
I didn't feel like me
The World's Strongest Man (Engel)
As the morning turned my way
See birds flying through his hazy face
And I came back here to replace your place in my life
And didn't you know that I'm not the world's strongest man
When it comes to you and your world I'm lost
Can't you see the towers of my naked shine like a dime
Take me back again to your warm desire
And again again again
Longing for belongings here again
And I need your love you know
I can't pretend anymore
And didn't you know that I'm not the world's strongest man
When it comes to you and your world I'm lost
Can't you see the towers of my naked shine like a dime
Take me back again to your warm desire
Voices from a photograph
Laughed from your wall
Screamed through your dreams
Wake up Rosemary and wipe your teary eyes
Rise and cross the cold bare floor
And watch the moon through frosted glass
Damn that photograph I'll have to take it down
She hears the boats as they move down the river
She sees a dog straining hard on his leash to get away
She hears the clock and it strikes like a hammer
Pounding the nails one day further in the coffin of her youth
Evenings with your mother's friends
Pregnant eyes, sagging chins
Swollen fingertips
Pour antique cups of tea
Who are you and where you been?
Suspended in a weightless wind
Watching trains go by
From platforms in the rain
Look at the photograph
Dream back last summer
Dream back the lips
Of that traveling salesman, Mr. Jim
He smelled of miracles
With stained glass whispers
You loved his laughter
You tremble beneath him once again
That's what I want
A new shot at life
But my coat's too thin
My feet won't fly
And I watch the wind and I see another dream blowin' by
Montague Terrace (In Blue) (Engel)
The little clock's stopped ticking now
We're swallowed in the stomached rue
The only sound to tear the night
Comes from the man upstairs
His bloated belching figure stomps
He may crash through the ceiling soon
The window sees trees cry from cold
And claw the moon
But we know don't we
And we'll dream won't we
Of Montague Terrace in blue
The girl across the hall makes love
Her thoughts lay cold like shattered stone
Her thighs are full of tales to tell
Of all the nights she's known
Your eyes ignite like cold blue fire
The scent of secrets everywhere
A fist filled with illusions
Clutches all our cares
But we know don't we
And we'll dream won't we
Of Montague Terrace in blue oh in blue
Mist falls and his voice cracks from the morning
Flowers and my body feels like lead
Someone should have stopped the birds from singing today
Hammers from striking nails into clay
Her face penetrates the blue gray morning
Her eyes pregnant pools produce a tear
Someone should have shouted you had gone in her ear
That summer was stolen away
Such a small love
Such a little tear
You would laugh so loud
If you could see us here
With my one suit
Badly pressed and worn
Like a child left
In the world alone
He speaks
I don't hear a word he's saying
Hang on to the pine trees and the snow
Reach out grab the memories that are left for your hand
They'll help you get by for a while
Such a small love
Such a little tear Is this all that's left
On your cheek so pale
His shallow half lit eyes
His rotted teeth grown on
A drunken madman nights
Ending up in jail
With night fallings
Drenched in Day-Glo red
Words collided
Things we left unsaid
Perfumed pillows
Girls that clung so near
Such a small love
Such a little tear