Tunie: Night Train to Lorca

About

By the Pogues, on the LP "Peace and Love." I don't know if it's the stark simplicity of the individual words or the evocative images conjured by their juxtaposition, but I simply love these lyrics.

Across the dark and dusty plain

Where scars of old dry rivers run

Night unfolds, a coal black shroud

Across the hard and stony ground

Distant stars shining bright

In the cavern of the night

All is still and silence screams

To the thunder of the Lorca train

Flaming steel swift as wind

Wires hum the rails ring

Smokestack burning fiery sparks

Rise up to the stars

Towns asleep by empty roads

Churches rise from crooked roofs

Cloaked in darkness nothing stirs

Grow smaller darker disappear

(chorus)

See the moon so still and cold

A million stars that shed no warmth

Your nightmares all come out to play

In the silver light

Wait for sunrise in the east

Long shadows crawl across the plain

The ghosts of night will disappear

And lay your fears to rest

Steam hissed up, the hot coals glowed

The furnace blazed, the wheels they rolled

On tracks of iron, straight and cold

The silver moonlight danced

The flames are in the fireman's eye

Orange in the engine's glow

Gleaming pistons whirling cranks

Wait for dawn the rooster's crow