| He shows up at the party in a pair of dark glasses
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| His grandfather wore in the war
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| Saying nothing to no-one, just drinks as if that’s
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| What God gave him his ugly mouth for
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| And he doesn’t make passes at the girls in the corner
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| In their Bolshevik glasses and black
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| When they giggle a little and look at him funny
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| The gatecrasher only looks back
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| He takes in the faces, never quite placing them
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| Squinting his short-sighted eyes
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| And each one reminds him of someone he’s known
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| Or someone he faintly dislikes
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| And he can’t understand the naive curiosity
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| Forcing two strangers to talk
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| When language is always and everywhere language
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| And people are like cheese and chalk
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| So he lifts himself out of his squatting position
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| And gets up for something to eat
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| But the ham is too pink and the turkey is cardboard
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| And the plate is as floppy as meat
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| So he fills up his glass with a bottle of vodka
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| Snatched from some new arrivals who stare
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| As he tips back his head like a man seized with laughter
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| And spits the drink into the fire
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| And he looks so appealing with eyes like a bloodhound
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| And hair like the 'Quatre Cent Coups'
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| With the holes in his trousers designed to arouse us
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| He looks like he’d know what to do
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| On the rims of his eyes there’s a trace of infection
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| Or maybe the mark of a tear
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| Is it mascara or is it bacteria, there where the white disappears?
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| And which of those girls isn’t scared of him
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| And which of us isn’t the same
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| And maybe that’s why, of the four of them
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| No one remembers the gatecrasher' s name
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| Absentmindedly licking the tip of a finger
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| He’s just used for scratching his ear
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| He wrinkles his nose at the taste of the wax
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| Which, like him, is acidic and sour
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| And just for a second something comes back to him
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| Something so real and remote
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| That he flings back his vodka to blank out the thought
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| And he grins as it scorches his throat
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| Maybe he thinks of his mother, how she kicked out his father
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| When he’d pushed her around once too much
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| And how he’d pretended to sleep as she hugged him
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| And how he’d been calmed by her touch
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| Or he’s sad with nostalgia for a little Italian
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| Who worked in a bar in Milan
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| While they swept up the glass on Piazza Fontana
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| He knew she’d be thinking of him
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| She’d be thinking of him
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| Or he wonders why Hitler liked lemon verbena
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| And whether he loved Eva Braun
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| Or maybe he thinks of his cheap bed and breakfast
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| On the far side of town |