Ventriloquists and Dolls

The music hall is dark, the city lies in silence
Traffic lights are changing in the distance
The radio plays Brahms
Opening the door of his Fiesta the ventriloquist
Steps out into the air beneath the stars
Rubs his hands against the frost
And tucks the dummy in her case beneath his arm

Ventriloquists and dolls
Tailors and their dummies
Moving in parallel worlds
Like wolves and little girls
Gangsters and their molls
Ventriloquists and dolls

And slowly on his painful wooden leg the ventriloquist
Clumps up the wooden steps towards his flat
A single room filled up with mannequins
And dangling from the beams on tangled strings, a marionette
And his carving's been so painstaking it looks for all the world
Like flesh and blood
Realistic to a fault, his dolls are portraits carved in wood
Of little girls

And opening the bottle with his teeth
He pours the beer into the beerglass on the bed
Drinks it at a gulp, brings up the gas
Takes off his pants, unscrews his wooden leg
And though his face is frighteningly ugly and he takes her by surprise and very fast
The doll he crushes under him immediately agrees to everything he asks