On the Curious Works of Strangers





Belshazzar

(translated by Daniel Platt)

The midnight hour drew closer on;
In mute repose lay Babylon.

But up in the castle of the king
There's noise, and torches flickering.

Up there in the kingly hall so vast
Belshazzar held his king's repast.

The lackeys sat in a shimmering line,
And emptied their beakers of sparkling wine.

The beakers were klinking, the lackeys were loud,
It did the stiff-necked monarch proud.

The king's cheeks glowed with a fervent shine;
And boldness quickened with the wine,

And by this boldness blindly spurred,
He blasphemed God with a sinful word.

And he boasted and mocked the holy name;
The lackey troop roared its acclaim.

The king called out with a haughty face;
The servant flew and returned apace.

He bore on his head much golden ware;
From Jehovah's temple, plundered there.

And the monarch seized, with outrageous whim,
A holy beaker, filled to the brim.

And he drained it rashly to the drips
And cried aloud with foaming lips:

Jehovah! I scorn Thee from now on -
I am the king of Babylon!

Yet scarcely were the words expressed,
But a secret trembling began in his breast.

No laughter rang out loud and shrill;
The hall became cadaver-still.

Behold! Behold! upon the wall
A thing — a hand — came in the hall;

And wrote in fire upon the wall,
And wrote, and vanished in the pall.

The king just sat there, goggle-eyed,
With knocking knees, pale, terrified.

The lackey troop, by horror bound,
Sat cold and still, without a sound.

Magicians came, yet none at all
Could decipher the flame-script on the wall.

But Belczar, that very night
By his own men was killed outright.

The Map of Cars, Mercury and Marquis

That was the labrynth we skirted in the gulch
a hard right past the Philadelphia where
hash was the babysitting tutorial.
The only baby is in that jar, it is lifted.
Carmen and Peter and all Jewish Jon ran off
while my sister tailed along
to see some more of the avante garde
on subway street. Can't remember
changing the diapers but I must have arrived
to that engagement in the brougham.
Boy it was so big where the cop ran me down.
Found the brougham a week later in front of elmo's,
he stood in front of me (in high heels) with his black boots,
"Do that again young lady and you'll get
fleeing arrest," what a thing! and now it's small.
Fleeing arrest, no better way to describe that
glide down youngblood with brakes tapping,
the sides of the alley almost scraping
stopping just short of a decision,
up to zacatecas or down to the lyric,
but old bear was up in the canyon
casting spells on the mons, mine
and several others so you file down to the bottom
again, another hard right past the grassy,
past the flood-stained county library
up to the baptist church where pies
never burned, zig zag the castle rocks
where turquoise bob was selling coke
from an old barbeque grill window, the cafe
nearwhere the brakeman broke his victorian spine -
the old coaster races that Jack runs now,
up to the iron man part of Cork, all those
serenity prayer miners hacking in the echoes,
crawling slowly just out of sight of the rectory
slow enough to catch a whiff of the votives.
Another right but not so hard into garden
past spider across from our cousin's house
which was then empty except for the touching
we did under the ocatillo canopy with the harsh
tunnel under the stairs and into the garage, buried in the hill.
Up to mayer, back that brougham in, her long spine
and they are all girls we said, part of the celtic
myth of deers, the two point
bucks and doe eyed weaklings, all the cars
are girls, and you got away and pushed her spine
to the end of laundry hill and let her down easy.
The eight track was hauling out year of the cat.


http://thomasfly.com/songs/Al_Stewart/Year_of_the_Cat.htm