Bruce Cockburn Use Me While You Can Lyrics

Use Me While You Can Lyrics

There's a black and white crow

on the back of a two-toned sheep

in a
field of broken yellow stalks

below looming cliffs. 



High
above the plains

little grey houses blend

with giant jagged
boulders

and pale weathered stumps. 



Life in the ghost of
the bush. 



Wind whips the acacias and strange forked palms

That cluster around the water hole 



Suddenly, out of the
blowing sand

A milk-white camel appears. 



Turbaned rider,
blue robe billowing,

bounces with the shambling trot;

wears a sword
and a rifle on his back,

and hanging from his neck, a transistor radio...




You blink and like ghosts, they're gone 



Under the
wan disc of sand-masked sun

A woman grins - spits expertly

Into the
path of a struggling black beetle

Six feet away

Hoists her water
bucket onto her head

And strides off up the trail... 



Sun a
steel ball glowing

Behind endless blowing sand

Sun a steel ball
glowing

Dust of fallen empires slowly flowing through my hands

Use
me while you can 



Pearl held in black fingers

Is the moon
behind dry trees

Pearl held in black fingers

Bird inside the rib
cage is beating to be free

Use me while you can 



I've had
breakfast in New Orleans

Dinner in Timbuktu

I've lived as a
stranger in my own house, too

Dark hand waves in lamplight

Cowrie
shell patterns change

And nothing will be the same again 



Bullet in a sandstorm

Looking for a place to land

Bullet in a
sandstorm

Full heart beats an empty one

In the deck they dealt to
man

Use me while you can