The line is out and out on the line
are Ideas and Ideals, all washed and hung
Linen like mainsails, a buffeted train!
We come into the garden
The lost boys from town
come to tear the sheets down
Snatching at Marxism's yielding spine
and America's smoky, collapsing lung
The line is out and out on the line
are icons and old wrecks
limp and then taught and then
fat, and some coloured
We drag down Christ by the rivulets of wine
Woman by her barrel-rolling young
Linen like mainsails, a buffeted train!
We fly them like flags
and throw them like nets
and wear them like robes
Pulling down War for a tent, and our own
Freedom for a noose. Who'll be strung?
The line is out and out on the line
We play world politics
I'm the old dragon
The rest run and gather
The buckshot edges of Palestine
and turn them til it's all tightly wrung
and the linen's like a hoop, a tatty rope train
They chew on it and
tie it round their feet
I get up on the line
I'm a tightrope walker, slippery and fine
The lord of the long wire tongue
The line is out I'm out on the line
Filling my mainsails, taking the train!
