Текст песни Potter's Field (Tom Waits) с переводом

Well you can buy me a drink and I’ll tell you what I’ve seen

And I’ll give you a bargain from the edge of a maniac’s dream

That buys a black widow spider with a riddle in his yarn

That’s clinging to the furrow of a blind man’s brow

And I’ll start talking from the brim of a thimble full of whiskey

On a train through the Bronx that will take you just as far

As the empty of a bottle to the highway of a scar

That stretched across the blacktop of my cheek like that

And then ducks beneath the brim of a fugitive’s hat

You’ll learn why liquor makes a stool pigeon rat on every face

That ever left a shadow down on Saint Mark’s place

Hell I’d double-cross my mother if it was whiskey that they paid

And so an early bird says Nightstick’s on the hit parade

And he ain’t got a prayer and his days are numbered

And you’ll track him down like a dog

But it’s a tough customer you’re getting in this trade

Cause the Nightstick’s heart pumps lemonade

And whiskey keeps a blind man talking all right

And I’m the only one who knows just where he stayed last night

He was in a wrecking yard in a switchblade storm

In a wheelbarrow with nothing but revenge to keep him warm

And a half a million dollars in unmarked bills

Was the nightstick’s blanket in a February chill

And the buzzards drove a crooked sky beneath a black wing halo

He was dealing high Chicago in the mud

And stacking the deck against a dragnet’s eye

And the shivering nightstick in a miserable heap

With the siren for a lullaby singing him to sleep

And bleeding from a buttonhole and torn by a slug

Fired from the barrel of a two dollar gun

That scorched a blister on the grip of a punk by now

Is learning what you have to pay to be a hero anyhow

He dressed the hole in his gut with a hundred dollar bandage

A king’s ransom for a bedspread that don’t amount to nothing

Just cobweb strings on a busted ukulele

And the nightstick leaned on a black shillelagh

With the poison of a junkie’s broken promise on his lip

He staggered in the shadows screaming I ain’t never been afraid

And he shot out every street light on the promenade

Past the frozen ham and eggers at the penny arcade

Throwing out handfuls of a blood stained salary

They were dead in their tracks at the shooting gallery

And they fired off a twenty-one gun salute

And from the corner of his eye he caught the alabaster orbs

Of a dime a dance hall girl and stuffed a thousand dollar bill in her blouse

And caught the cruel and unusual punishment of her smile

And the nightstick winked beneath a rain soaked brim

Ain’t no one seen hide nor hair of him since

No one except a spade on Riker’s Island and me

So if you’re mad enough to listen to a full of whiskey blind man

And you’re mad enough to look beyond where the bloodhounds dare to go

And if you want to know where the nightstick’s hiding out

You be down at the ferry landing oh let’s say about half past a nightmare

When it’s twisted on the clock and you tell them nickel sent you

Whiskey always makes him talk

And you ask for Captain Charon with the mud on his kicks

He’s the skipper of the deadline steamer

And she sails from the Bronx across the river Styx

And a riddle is just a ticket for a dreamer

Cause when the weathervane is sleeping and the moon turns his back

You crawl on your belly along the railroad tracks

And cross your heart and hope to die and stick a needle in your eye

Cause he’d cut my bleeding heart out if he found out that I squealed

Cause you see a scarecrow is just a hoodlum

Who marked the cards that he dealed

And pulled a gypsy switch

Out on the edge of Potter’s Field

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