Montreal,
where Europe meets America,
I saw Leonard Cohen's house,
and that was good.
And since it was the festival,
there were jazz bands playing
on the street corners,
like I knew they always would.
And the surrogate sister,
she took me in her arms
and said, Hey Andy,
welcome to the new world
I was speechless
Speechless
In Toronto there's the
longest street in the world
And I had to find a place
called The Beat Bookshop
I went in to buy a 25 cents trash novel
It was called Stranger In Our Midst
And round the corner in an electrical store
An old man looked me in the eye
Said, son, you look speechless
In Boston,
where everybody wears red socks,
I met some lost and
lonesome Irish boys.
They thought if they left
home fast enough,
they could find their own voice.
But as the ship sailed out into the harbour,
the flower music playing,
I saw their homeland in their eyes,
and I was speechless,
speechless.
In Philadelphia and Washington D .C.,
the driving seat of this whole big country,
I saw the Endless Horizons
parceled uprail me,
and delivered as the
skyscraper in a street,
and the homeless queuing outside
the White House for food,
and the black guy selling matchsticks
in the hotel lobby
left me speechless, speechless,
New York, he had hit me late one night,
going
Down to the convenience store
with Big Stevie for a beer
Summin' about the subway steam
and the way cigarettes never taste
the way they do round here
And the guy playin' a drunk
in the back of a hip -hop bus
And the rapper's son
of 6th Avenue
and 13th Street
left me speechless
I said speechless
Rain swept the orange boxes
on the Chicago street
A bright shiny city all covered in lights
And a clean girl from the Midwest
told me it's so good
they don't need to name it twice
And a second city wind blew
from across the lake
I had a bottle of wine outside
for Bobby's sake
And I was speechless
Speechless
San Francisco stretches itself
out on the side of a hill
With white walled house
s and open top mines
That night we played a gig of Slims
There were crazy hitchhikers,
a ballerina, and wheelchair Janet
Me and a bunch of flowers,
staying up late
Not a mile from the Golden Gate,
by the morning we were speechless
We were all speechless
An old railroad diner,
an Italian restaurant out
in Santa Monica
Driving upon the Act
Firebird, right -hand side
The gunshots,
the glitter and the grease paint
Cruising Beverly Hills,
the North Maybelline Drive
Suddenly she showed
up on her shoulders
That Elizabeth Taylor look
I thought I'd read the answers now
I'd thrown away the book I was
speechless
Speechless
The time we hit Texas
Our Irish skin was nearly fried
And we saw the faceless
place where in 1963
They said America died
Me and Liam in a diner
They thought our accents
Where I'd rage asleep
and know we were
speechless
Speechless
Last stop was Atlanta
So, so deep in the South
The sky was gliding over
And the music came tumbling up
The phone rang like something
from a cable movie scene
Calling me home from that
American dream
Speechless
Speechless, Speechless
Speechless, in the airport lobby
Speechless, my life full of joy
Speechless, a laugh in my throat
Speechless,
like the letters I never wrote
The night came dark,
the moon turned black
The rain fell up and the wind blew back
I was Speechless,
Speechless
The night came dark,
the moon turned black,
the rain fell up and the wind blew back
I was speechless, speech less,
speechless,
speechless, yeah, speechless
Just now I saw the bloated belly
of a starving child
Matchstick arms and an old
man's eyes
He'd watched his family slowly die
Sitting on a skull too weak to cry
In some forgotten corner of Africa
They said foreign aid was dropping
because of the war
I was speechless
Watching TV till late tonight
Since the bulbs were gone,
it was by candlelight
The room was dark, the moon turned black
The rain fell up and the wind blew back
Every ten minutes,
flashing on the screen
Were the bloody banners
of the American war machine
I'm speechless
And the president pleading
support the war
Won't somebody tell me
what we were fighting it for?
I'm speechless
The horror still hasn't gone through
to command posts
where generals suck pencils
and order steak
and where tv crews on leave play cards
the ship of hope is still
moored in its harbour
while we set sail as Willard's crew into darkness headed
for its terrible heart and a horror now so easily attainable
did no one die in Flanders field
or not enough at Agincourt
Were there too many people
left alive in Dresden
for blessed memory to forget?
Take us now and take our young
men down into the deep
Where young men before them
have suffered and died
Dreaming of their mothers
and a better life back home
Take us now for another late 20th
century sacrifice we've seen before
Those horrified faces still stare out
at backwoods forests in the U .S .A.
Lost forever in their horror.
Maybe in years to come,
Gulf survivors will stalk the deserts
Seeing dead comrades' ghosts
amidst the burning sands.
So it's all aboard Willard's ship,
all aboard
And no one screams stop,
and no one chooses to remember the horror
For we are the hollow men,
our heads stuffed with straw
The light fades,
till we're deep in the darkness
and we drop
The light fades,
till we're deep in the dark
ness and we drop
Speechless. Speechless.
