(Note: these lyrics are based on hearings of the song, and differ from those on the original lyric sheet for the album, which are incorrect in several places. Where two readings seem just as likely, the second follows in parentheses. Bloom, Molly, Stephen, and Boylan are all characters from the James Joyce novel Ulysses.)
Chemical change
You shock the morning
Animal eyes (Amber light)
Wake me warm
Let me see you
Moving everything over
Smiling in my room, you know
You'll be inside of my mind soon...
There are so many of you
White shirt and tie, white shirt and tie, white shirt and tie, wedding ring, wedding ring-
Mulligan stew for Bloom
The only Jew in the room
Saxon-sick on the holy dregs++
And he's constant getting throw-up on his legs
Molly's gone to blazes
Boylan's crotch amazes
Any woman whose husband sleeps
With his head all buried down at the foot of his bed...++
I've got his arm...
I've got his arm...
(I've had it for weeks...)
I've got his arm...
Stephen'll give his arm
To the goats on Mother's farm
War's good business so give your son*
And I've gotta have my country die for me...
There are so many of you
Sell your mother for a fishing line, grow up looking like a swine, There are...
All you want to do is live, all you want to do is live (give) but somehow
It all
Faalls
A p a r t...
++holy dregs...foot of his bed: Joyce experts say this refers to Leopold Bloom's love of cunnilingus.
*give your son: version of a contemporary (1967) antiwar bumper sticker: "War is good business: invest your son."
