We met on the beach amid rumours of war / Your head in your hand, what you saw you won’t say / As the newspapers flew in the wind

I can see you’re one of that kind / Who carry ’round a time bomb in their mind, no one knows / When you’ll slip the pin

Rumours of war, rumours of war

I see that your dress is torn at the edge / You were lost, intense, like a man on a ledge, waiting to jump / As the waves break over the shore

You say there’s a storm that can’t be delayed / And lately it seems to be comin’ this way, you can hear it break / Like the slam of a door

Rumours of war, rumours of war

You tell me, just look all around / At the past and the present, the cross and the crescent / The signs and the planets are lining up like before

There are souls on fire in the day and the night / On the left and the right, in the black and the white / You can see it burn in the eyes of the rich and the poor

Rumours of war, rumours of war / Rumours of war, rumours of war

[By Al Stewart – Peter Harry White © Rca / Emi, 1984]