Down Among The Wines And Spirits

Elvis Costello · Secret, Profane and Sugarcane [2009]

Down among the wines and spirits

Where a man gets what he merits

Once he was written in letters of nine feet tall

And now he finds how far he's fallen



Since he set his mind on her completely

Oh well, I guess that you mustn't have seen him lately

Walking around with a pain that never ceases

He starts to speak and then he falls to pieces



Down among the wines and spirits

Where a man gets what he merits

Lives with the echoing words of their final quarrel

The vacant chamber and the empty barrel



But as he picks himself up from a sawdust floor

Clicks his fingers to that swinging door

Suddenly he's calling out, more, more, more

I'm twice the foolish man I was before

Down among the wines and spirits



Bubbles escaping from him from the rim of a glass of grape

She sails through his memory just like a ship of chaplet

As it started to sink, he was drinking to drown his sorrows

That fill his nights and they empty his tomorrows



But as he picks himself up from a sawdust floor

Clicks his fingers to that swinging door

Suddenly he's calling out, more, more, more

Speaks of invisible things, he hardly credits

Down among, down among the wines and spirits