The complete text of Bono's homage to Samuel Beckett at the launch of the Beckett Centenary Festival this week
Un homage du Bono au maestro Samuel Beckett, starring un homage du Mannix Flynn à Barry McGovern - or a piece what I wrote called
Waiting for Colgan
I'm so tired, I'm so tired of the telephone
The telephone rings
The sound of cigar a booming voice in a booming town
Shattering the glasses of the drinking classes
1995 Puligny Montrachet, 400 quid a bottle glug glug glug...
Good buy good boy
One hundred years, one hundred bum steers, one hundred and seventeen thousand black beers before your peers
One hundred years
One hundred ears flappy happy happy clappy ears
It's hard not to be happy when you feel the sappy in someone else's veins
As they kick a banana ball through the splits
On your birthday
And Ireland
Wins the triple crown on your birthday
It's your birthday, it's your birthday
I've been waiting
Waiting a long time
One hundred years
It gets tiring all this velvety blackness
that's what Le Brocquy calls it
Velvety blackness but there's no nothingness
Oh no, just everythingness and judgment
The judgment of your peers
Where's Gaybo? Who's Ryanair? Where are the trolley dollies? It's not dollys on the trolleys now
It's the living and the dead clogging up the arteries of the health service
oh yes late to the late late to the Late Late Show
Isn't Brendan Gleeson the business
The pricks
The celts
Waiting, waiting for the tiger to catch its tail,
I'm waiting for the phone to ring
Michael Colgan
The sound of cigar
Booming town, booming voice, shattering the glasses of the drinking classes
Puligny Montrachet 1995
400 quid a bottle
Glug glug glug
One hundred years
I'm so tired
Louis and Anne, remember you gave me a signed copy of the unforgettable fire?
I told you I loved it? I lied, I never listened to it
Too busy
Waiting
Waiting for language to turn to liquid
Waiting for language to be our own again
Oh, Joyce had his revenge on they that put it in our mouth
His revenge
Was to chew it, bite into it, masticate and masterbate it
Make chewing gum of it
Spit it into hand and stick it on the bottom of a schoolboy's desk
Me I shrank it, swallowed it, made a fart out of it, made a fart out of everyone who didn't like the smell of it
Such confusion caused by ignoring the obvious
Metaphor I only met her for a drink... ha ha that's what Simon says
Black Bush. George Bush the da says
The bombs are dropping closer, the Brudder, Nikki Sudden
Shattering the glasses of the drinking classes
Puligny Montrachet 1995 glug glug glug
Mother's milk
I never had the mother's tongue
Just the father's cranky aloof and lofty voice
That language was always there growing like teeth in the gum, like Chomsky says
I got closer to the brain than anyone before or after
I could hear you thinking,
I can hear you thinking now
Blinkin' phone rings sound of cigars
Michael Colgan birthday parties
Puligny Montrachet, 1995, 400 quid a bottle
glug glug glug
I'm so tired
All those PhDs
All those questions
Where's Godot
Who's Godot
Everyone knows that
phone rings, sound of cigars
Table at the Unicorn
Puligny Montrachet
Glug glug glug
Big smoky voice shattering the glasses of the drinking classes
Birthday party sort it out
Tell them death isn't funny but eternity is a laugh
Tell the tiger not to eat its tale
Ah to win the triple crown on your birthday
Parties, it's great to have them and not be there
But don't leave people waiting for too long
One hundred years, it's a long time
The table is set, it looks great Michael
The sound of cigar, booming town, booming voice
Shattering the glasses of the drinking classes
Puligny Montrachet, glug glug glug
Waiting, waiting, waiting to be fuckin' understood
Waiting waiting waiting for Colgan
Good boy, goodbye.'
- Bono