Elige una pista para reproducir
The boy is holding his mother's hand
In the seaside station
The streets are silent in the rain
Naked and dead in their small town pain
When the train pulls in a man alights
Lugging a suitcase, battered but bright
With labels from the Argentine
Pulls down his hat, flexes his knees
Swaggers up the platform, Bogart on ice
Winks at the boy, kisses his wife
For a moment they're lost in their ardour
The boy is suddenly jealous of his father
The young couple walk hand in hand up the town
The boy just keeps his head down
Past the furniture store
Owned by a comrade from the Spanish Civil War
Looks in the window, to his surprise
An abolition in maple catches his eye
A loyalist guitar from the siege of Madrid
He presses his nose up to the windowsill
His father says "Como estas, señor?"
The boy is entranced by your guitar
Here's a couple of quid down
You get the rest next Saturday
Life's like that, isn't it?
Back in the house his parents disappear
To the bedroom they go but all the boy can hear
Are the strings echoing off of the maple
The father shouts out "Hey son, soon you'll be able
To play me a tango, knock spots off the sound"
Then he grabs his wife, twirls her around
The boy watches in wonder as the couple cavort
Outside the rain and the thunder drown out
The chill of the devotion of Bell
While inside their small kitchen
The father and mother are sublimely going to hell
The boy is religious, says mass at the friary
Ah, he's got a crush on St. Anthony
Got a hot date with him when he gets to heaven
But it's still hard to get up at twenty to seven
In a care for his morning, slates hitting the streets
Exploding in smithereens all around him
He runs in fear past the deserted garden
Where a man who himself is soul ever after
Sentenced to roam in search of salvation
But that morning his father leaves from the station
Six months on the banana run down to West Africa
It's up to him now, he's got to look after
His tangleless Bogart and broken-hearted mother
Later for you dad, it was nice while it lasted
Life's like that, isn't it?
The boy plays guitar, reads voraciously
About sex and revolution in the county library
And in bed he tunes in Radio Sofia
Gets it on with a sister comrade from Bulgaria
The librarian is worried, she visits his mother
All he wants is James Connolly and Patrice Lumumba
The friars don't know what to do with this communist
If he don't look out he'll end up poor as St. Francis
Them books is driving the poor chap crazy
It's time he got a job, he's far too lazy
Go out into the real world
Meet a nice girl
Ah, he meets the girl but she's not so nice
She wears micro dresses and stormy black eyes
He no longer has time for the county library
Learning about life in the back of a Mini
Her dress is so soft but it's nothing compared to
Her silky white thighs, oh how he'd like to
Go much further so they run off to Dublin
He's drinking too much, getting in trouble
With Mao's little red book he's ready for action
But Black Eyes wants a house, not satisfaction
In Terenure but he's heard Bernard at Dublin
So it's take to the streets, rock 'n' roll revolution
Black Eyes has gone on a boat to London
Connolly Youth is exploding
So he hops a plane to New York
He's down on the juice, hustling work
And recreation when she rings him
In a Richmond accent "My only darling
It would never work out, here is the reason
I've fallen head over heels for an English policeman"
So he plays a tango, remembers his father
Resolves to live life like Bogart
Turn pain to music, sorrow to laughter
Live for today, to hell with tomorrow
It started at the station waiting for his father
One moment affects everything thereafter but
Life's like that, isn't it?
Life's like that, isn't it?
Isn't it?