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 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 to day Speaking softly in a confidential way I saw her 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 a window and look down Into a muddy glass 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 a pistol points but never shoots, Army sitting in a locomotive yard without their boots Upstairs your man is painting 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 a countess and 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 eyes of adamantine, you despised his stripling whine 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 then on a villain's hands Watched him ransom and demand And then called 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 lens to burn Who are all these strangers? All these strangers Sat upon a narrow bed I 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 --- All These Strangers - Elvis Costello