My Toy Theatre

Lyrics

When I was born and placed upon my parent’s bridal bed

Made from the timber of a nobleman’s unwanted coffin

They say I screamed an endless song

Beyond that snuffed out spark

Frightened of the dark

That covers land like blight

Now all the verses that I sing

Are pulled out of the superstitious night

My poor mad grandfather would take his knife and carved strange beasts

Sometimes he’d wander from the forest with garlands in his hair

He sat shaping creatures that resembled dogs with wings

As harmless lunatics weave cradles out of twine

But deep within the spinning room

I feared one day this madhouse might be mine

All of them had recognised their worth

Accept for the changeling that lives beneath the stairs

I knew I was a foundling of some noble birth

My father dreamed some rare dreams for a shoemaker

He made for me this very fine toy theatre

He taught me how I might first cut and then dress the paper dolls

Showed me strings I should attach to every puppet and fool

And in time it came to me to give to them their stories and their souls

So do you think that my pale eye

Would fail to spy the street below?

Where gutters run with butcher’s blood

They say untold wealth lies

Beneath all unholy cries

While the poor pour fiery furnaces that spout

The brass that’s battered out into cornets that will trump

Notes from the wan fanfare of every loveless chump

Slumped in doorways, dimmed like lamps

Airs are strained with brazen verses

Harlot’s curses, dipping into beggar’s purses

Gambler’s hunches

Songs of finches

Forfeit these and sweeter stenches

Old men die by shrunken inches

Infants chained to factory benches

And yet I wait for him or is it her?

Hoping that they may appear

In My Toy Theatre

The words I really long to reach

Hide behind each halting speech

Just as some familiar hand lies just beyond my grasp

From that first fine entrance and through each mistake until our life’s last gasp

Credits

• Written by: Elvis Costello

Discography

This unreleased song is intended for Elvis' chamber opera The Secret Songs Of Hans Christian Andersen.

Covers

• none

Bootlegs

• none
• This section may be incomplete.