Sacred Cough Bottle

In the bowels of old Georgian houses
Bodies are wrapped in routine
Peeling the weekly allowance
While Billie Holiday whispers in the corner
Using one another as canvases
Happily absorbing every single brush stroke
Subterranean skin pressed on subterranean skin
While Billie Holiday whispers in the corner

What could beat it for a life?
Seldom-seen creatures of comfort
Are leaning toward the light
And the heirs are returning from their fruitless flight
Dublin mumbles in the morning
Yeah, well, she buckles in the night

Out there in the middle distance
Some old woman is claiming
To be the last living suffragette
Speaking in a nebulized voice
While she picks and she plucks a busted violin

Oh, by a stained glass window
Wearing nothing nothing nothing
But trousers of bottle-green tweed
A young mesmeric who’s just lost his marbles
In a haze of hashish and chamomile tea

Into his gob, a cigarette is lobbed
Forsake sickness for ill health
Stick a few pound in an Irish Independent
Send it to me by post, my friend

What could beat it for a life?
Seldom-seen creatures of comfort
Are leaning toward the light
Dublin mumbles in the morning
Yeah, well, she buckles in the night

I hear the meaning of life has been written down
On the back of a holy picture
In a boxing club in town
Some say the men of the ocean
As they lie and they lie and they lie
And they lie amongst the waves

I will act as mediator
For this score and tree
While they compose their manifesto
Read my kitchen table over cups of tar-like tea

What could beat it for a life?
Seldom-seen creatures of comfort
Are moving toward the light
And the heirs are returning from their fruitless flight
Dublin mumbles in the morning
Yeah, well, she buckles in the night

Dublin mumbles in the morning
Yeah, well, she buckles in the night