Elvis Costello - Poor Fractured Atlas

Extreme Honey-Very Best Of The Warner Brothers Years / 1997-10-21 1. 13 Steps Lead Down 2. All the Rage 3. All This Useless Beauty 4. Couldn't Call It Unexpected No.4 5. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror 6. Hurry Down Doomsday 7. I Want to Vanish 8. Kinder Murder 9. London's Brilliant Parade 10. My Dark Life 11. Poor Fractured Atlas 12. So Like Candy 13. Sulky Girl 14. The Birds Will Still Be Singing 15. The Bridge I Burned 16. The Other Side of Summer 17. Tramp The Dirt Down 18. Veronica

Poor Fractured Atlas

He's out in the woods with his squirrel gun
To try to recapture his anger
He's screaming some words at the top of his lungs
Until he begins to feel younger
But back at his desk in the city we find
Our trembling punch-drunken fighter
Who can't find the strength now to punish the length
Of the ribbon in his little typewriter

Poor Fractured Atlas
Threw himself across the mattress
Waving his withering pencil
As if it were a pirate's cutlass
I'm almost certain he's trying to increase his burden
He said "That's how the child in me planned it;
A woman wouldn't understand it"

I believe there was something that I wanted to say
Before I conclude this epistle
But you would forgive me for holding my tongue
'Cause man made the blade and the pistol
Yes man made the waterfall over the dam
To temper his tantrum with magic
Now you can't be sure of that tent of azure
Since he punched a hole in the fabric

Chorus

A woman wouldn't understand it
A woman wouldn't understand it