All These Strangers

Mistreat me darling and I might just disappear

Upon freighter running dark out of Algiers

Put tiny grains in children's tears

While taking 25% of all the flashbulbs and mementoes

From the mechanized divisions rolling over your frontiers

I saw my baby talking to a man today

Speaking softly in a confidential way

I saw a shadow pull his glove off

As a bluebird flew over

Life's is no pleasure

When you doubt the one you love

Who are all these strangers

I never will go back again

Go back into the past

The flood is rising fast

You can break your window and look down

Into a muddy glass

For it's mirror or lens to burn

There was a deal done in Benghazi and Belgrade

Upon a scimitar or other crooked blade

Ransacks and loots vacated suits

And pistol points but never shoots

Army sitting in a locomotive yard without their boots

Upstairs your man is painting the rain out in the street

Imagines woman that he's destined still to meet

He's trying sidetrack one to count on

Caught somewhere between countess or a courtesan

And it's only love to feign and then it's gone

Who are all these strangers

He's a privateer as dusk gets near

A brigand after dark his victim lined with chalk

A corsair filled with horsehair to the core

Dashed on your eyes of adamantine

You despised his stripling whine

That little smudger and the mouthpiece that he's with

Using his clause just like a practised fingersmith

I dreamed I took his digit prints

And then I sewed them on a villain's hands

Watched him ransom and demand

Until called the flatfoots in

I never will go back again

Go back into the past

The flood is rising fast

You can break your window and look down

Into a muddy glass

For it's a mirror or lens to burn

Who are all these strangers

All these strangers

Sat down on a narrow bed

Thought about the things she said

All these strangers

How I wished the night would never end

Tried to stop the days ahead

I'd carve her name down in the wood

Some small remembrance if I could