Jazz: Lyric Sheets

Recent revelations indicate that, at one time, the author Salman Rushdie hid from potential assassins in a gazebo in the grounds of Bono's clifftop villa near Dublin. The author's next book is reported to be about a rock group.

In A Rock Star's Belvedere

Far from the literary high-life

Safe in a quiet hideaway

More or less as the crow flies

Opposite Colwyn Bay

Awaiting conditional pardon

He stayed in the rock star's garden

The screech of a high-flying seagull

The swash of the Irish Sea

The tinkle of cups in the kitchen

As his god-like host made tea

He unpacked a packet of patna

And pondered the length of the fatwa

He set up his lap-top computer

And stared at an unfinished page

Later that night with Zooropa

Bono phoned up from the stage

A housekeeper took him a snack round

To rabid applause in the background

Mornings he strolled on the clifftop

Wrote the odd note to his wife

Workmen constructing a lemon

Many times larger than life

For a world tour in the new year

Watched as the fugitive drew near:

"Jayzus, that face is familiar,"

One of the labourers said

"Isn't he one of those writers?

Him with the price on his head?

Well he might be a literary lion

But I prefer Edna O'Brien."