Al Stewart все тексты (слова) песен, переводы, видео, клипы

I'm here sitting in the wreck of Europe
With a map of Europe
Spread out in a hall of Versailles
And every single nationality and principality
have come for a piece of the pie

I'm sitting in the wreck of Europe
With a map of Europe

Maid, truly I see now it must be a long way down
And with love's bud shorn
Now must all dalliance hither crumble and wither
Oh strange, methought it strange
Thou couldst deprive me of my crown
And my freedom that thou cast upon me as
Litter bears fruit of bitter strain

Lucy worked a different club every day
And though she put her mind to it
Her heart was never in it
She stayed around just long enough to get paid
She won't pass the time with you
She can't stay a minute
And all these changing faces never bothered her at all
That just existed like a back-drop

One day you fell
Down from the sky
You oversaw things
Forgot how to fly
You're an angry bird
Walking in circles all alone
Angry bird
Now you don't belong

This is the day you disappeared
Your hand was steady and I know that your mind was clear
You left a note up on the shelf
Saying "I would rather be anyone but myself"

You took a simple ride across the Great Divide
You left the television on in you room
Your friends were sad although they said "I told you so"

You've got a bad reputation
All over the street
There's some indication
You've been indiscreet

Oh I know you can turn on the charm
When you feel so inclined
Whatever I do

Late at night
When reality's failing and nothing is prevailing but the wind
I come to you
Out of sight
Like a fugitive trailing across a barren land, you let me in
You always do
My reason is caught by a sudden gust
Of lateral thought that sweeps me

Old jazz guys being interviewed
Thirty years beyond their prime
With memories of road shows
From the Golden Age of Swingtime

The piano player strikes a chord
Leans forward on his stool
And through they've all seen better days

Across the western world
The fights are going down
The gypsy armies of the evening
Have lit their fires across
The nether side of town
They will not pass this way again
So here in the night
Leave your home it's time for running

Prince Louis Battenberg is burning the admiralty lights down low
Silently sifting through papers sealed with a crown
Admiral Lord Fisher is writing to Churchill
Calling for more dreadnoughts
The houses in Hackney they are all falling down

And my grandmother sits on the beach in the days before the war
Young girl writing her diary while time seems to pause

There is an independent book store
The last one that remained
All the othres you might look for
Have been eaten by the chains
The soldier on
On one cleans the windows panes

and it was there I read the story

Dinner with Ben Franklin on Friday night
The invitation read
Of course I wrote and thanked him
I wouldn't miss it for the world I said
His table is so well kept

He plays the glass harmonica
And talks of wind and kites

It's a good day
for going to sea
Hanno the Navigator said to me.
There's an open sky and a steady breeze
out beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Above the foam-kissed waves seagulls scream
up in the masts of our trireme
and it's a good day

I was surrounded by a large hippopotamus
And nine of its friends who declared quite a lot of us
Are feeling rather blue
And we don't know what to do
I turned away but the large hippopotamus
Said that his pit of despair appeared bottomless
Yet hippopotami
Are not supposed to cry

Nothing that's forced can ever be right
If it doesn't come naturally, leave it
That's what she said as she turned out the light
And we bent our backs as slaves of the night
She lowered her guard and showed me the scars
She got from trying to fight
Saying oh, you'd better believe it

Oh I come from Pittsburgh to study astrology
She said as she stepped on my instep
I could show you New York with a walk between Fourth Street and Nine
Then out of her coat taking seven harmonicas
She sat down to play on a doorstep
Saying, Come back to my place I will show you the stars and the signs
So I followed her into the black lands
Where the window frames peel and flake

She's a mollusk, a seamstress, a princess
A priestess, a negress, she knows her position
She's a swallow, a willow, a cello,
A pillow, a bow and also a physician

She takes your eyes and mends your head
She draws the wine and breaks the bread
She has no lies to tell you and no truths to sell you

I was watching TV late last night
And a scene transported me
Long gone figures came back to life
In a documentary
Though I saw them dance for joy
I was sad I missed that show
If I had a time machine
I know just where I'd go

When I get even more old than I am now
I'll have a house overlooking the water
I'll read all the books that I never got 'round to
And pile my suitcases up in the corner

The lights of the city they blink off and on again
Names in my memory are there, then they're gone again
Albums of photographs spread on the floor again

Dreamed I was the King of Portugal
In a big four poster bed
Noble tapestries from wall to wall
And a crown upon my head
Bells ring and servants bring
The jewels and the robes
For the night to begin

The morning is humming, it's a quarter past nine
I should be working down in the vines
But I'm lying here with a good friend of mine
Watching the sun in her hair

I pick the grapes from the hills to the sea
The fields of France are a home to me
Ah, but today lying here is a good place to be

Oh, come away from the day, here I stay
Living on the bottom of the sea
Down metal snake, corridors, steely gray
Engines hum for nobody but me

No sound comes from the sea above me
No messages crackles through the radio leads
They'll never know, never, no, never

I got a letter; it came in the mail today
I saw by the stamp it was written an ocean away
No need to open it, I know what it must say
I?ll just go back to the dream I was having
Before love went astray

I?ll sit on my porch like William McKinley
And I?ll let the world come to me

Oh baby
Come and tell me 'bout your tree house
And your candy-striped pet mouse
And your carpet house feet
Hey come tell me about your eyebrows that meet

And baby
Come and tell me about your chilblain

Prince Louis Battenberg is burning the Admiralty lights down low
Silently sifting through papers sealed with a crown
Admiral Lord Fisher is writing to Churchill, calling for more Dreadnoughts
The houses in Hackney are all falling down
And my grandmother sits on the beach in the days before the war
Young girl writing her diary, while time seems to pause
Watching the waves as they come one by one to die on the shore
Kissing the feet of England

You say with best intention
Let's throw away convention
Set sail across the water
To find the tides of fortune
I say please understand it
Don't let our love be stranded
Upon the midnight rocks
Upon the midnight rocks

Oh the sweet addiction
Of forbidden fruit
Oh the strange affliction
That has taken root

Oh the hidden cancer
Cancer of the soul
Oh the necromancer

Oh your pictures they don't really do you justice little girl
For you're careful not to let the camera touch your private world
And there's just a hint of sadness in your smile through the dark
As you slip your dress off slowly for the sailor or the clerk
And it could have been so different, and at times you feel bad
For you really did have something that the others never had
And the circle turns and turns and turns so mad, little girl

The fishing boats go out across the evening water
Smuggling guns and arms across the Spanish border
The wind whips up the waves so loud
The ghost moon sails among the clouds
Turns the rifles into silver on the border

On my wall the colours of the maps are running
From Africa the winds they talk of changes coming

It seems to me as though I've been upon this stage before
And juggled away the night for the same old crowd
These harlequins you see with me, they too have held the floor
As here once again they strut and they fret their hour
I see those half-familiar faces in the second row
Ghost-like with the footlights in their eyes
But where or when we met like this last time I just don't know
It's like a chord that rings and never dies

In my darkest hour just before the dawn
There's no sound from the empty street
But sleep won't seem to come to me
All your words in my head

Linger on and on
They've come to steal my time away
Till the night is gone

Catalina on a fishing boat
We call it Henry Cisneros
We got no money but we stay afloat
The jellyfishes don't scare us

You're telling everybody life's a ball
Too many pleasures to mention
You do a cartwheel in the shopping mall

On a night just like this, in a place far away
He met with a girl in the spring
And something about him just turned her around
As though she were caught on a string
And being so young they held on to each other
To see what the moment might bring
He loved her then in a secretive way
Not showing his care or his need

I sent my majordomo to your amanuensis
To ascertain your feelings, and strip away pretenses
And then a few days later, you sent back your vizier
And though he spoke quite courteously
His meaning wasn't clear
Not to my majordomo
Not to my majordomo

We met on the beach amid rumours of war
Your head in your hand, what you saw you won't say
As the newspapers blew in the wind
I can see you're one of that kind
Who carry round a time bomb in their mind, no one knows
When you'll slip the pin
Rumours of war
Rumours of war

After these processions comes the sweeping up
The rag and bone possessions, an old tin cup
The army trucks have hauled away the newly slain
The angry crowd retreats, but they?ll be back again

And the prisoner in the palace does not understand
The ingratitude around him after all he?s done and planned
But if this the way that it must be then he?ll be damned

The stranger comes to town
He is greeted like a prince
Society declares him wise and funny
Celebrities are only decorations in this place
What really matters here is old money
His temporary lover has amber coloured skin
In a lush apartment in the city center
Bankers like his company

Mr Carmichael says that he loves his wife
I believe he does
Gives her everything that a man can give
But Mr Carmichael beggars himself on the altar
Of his love
And you can tell him that that's not the way to live

And oh how the wind has blown

This place is so far away
From what passes for civilized life
No shops and no cars and no city lights
Just a river of stars
Over the southernmost ocean so cold
A small group of rocks, seagulls and ice

Some ramshackle huts

It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All round the day was goin' down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight

In the sapling years of the post war world
In an English market town
I do believe we traveled in schoolboy blue
The cap upon the crown
Books on knee
Our faces pressed against the dusty railway carriage panes
As all our lives went rolling on the clicking wheels of trains
The school years passed like eternity

I used to have a secret cellar
Where I kept the sweetest of my wine
Now it seems that I've been too long
Hanging on the vine

And now she's turning it into water
Never be the same again
She's turning it into water

I walked out in the snow
And left no mark upon the ground I trod
The sky, heavy and low
The exhalation of an Arctic god

And I heard words meant for no one
In the air,words out of nowhere
And I saw all at once at my feet

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came