All These Strangers

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 twenty-five percent 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?

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

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?
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
He despised this stripling why

That little smudger and the mouthpiece that he's with
Using his claws just like a practiced 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 call the flatfoots in

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?
All these strangers
Sat upon a narrow bed
Thought about the things she said
All these strangers
How I wish the night would end
Try to stop the days ahead
I'd carve her name down in the wood
Some small remembrance if I could