All These Strangers

[Verse 1]

"Mistreat me darling and I might just disappear"

Upon a freighter running dark out of Algiers

Put tiny grains in children's tears

While taking 25% of all those flashbulbs and mementos

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 no pleasure when you doubt the one you love

Who are all these strangers?

[Bridge]

I never will go back again

Go back into the past, the flood is rising fast

You can break the window and look down

Into the muddy glass for it's a mirror or a lens to burn

[Verse 2]

Now there's a deal done in Benghazi and Belgrade

Upon a scimitar or other crooked blade

Ransacks and loots, vacated suits

And a pistol points but never shoots

An army sitting in a locomotive yard without their boots

Upstairs your man is painting rain out in the street

Imagines women that he's destined still to meet

He's trying to sidetrack one to count on

Caught somewhere between a countess and a courtesan

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

Who are all these strangers?

[Bridge]

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 eyes of Adamantine, you despised this stripling whine

[Verse 3]

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 and watched him ransom and demand

And then called the flatfoots in

[Bridge]

I never will go back again

Go back into the past, the flood is rising fast

You can break the window and look down

Into the muddy glass for it's a mirror or a lens to burn

Who are all these strangers?

[Outro]

All these strangers

Sat upon a narrow bed, thought about the things she said

All these strangers

How I wished the night would end, tried to stop the days ahead

I'd carve her name down in the wood, some small remembrance if I could