Ignacio lay dying in the sand
A single red rose clutched in a dying hand
The women wept to see their hero die
And the big black birds gathered in the sky

Mother of all our joys, mother of all our sorrows
Intercede with him tonight
For all of our tomorrows

The years went by and then the killers came
And took the men and marched them up a hill of pain
And Lorca the faggot poet they left 'til last
Blew his brains out with a pistol up his ass

(Refrain)

The killers came to mutilate the dead
But ran away in terror to search the town instead
Lorca's corpse, as he had prophesied, just walked away
And the only sound was the woman in the chapel praying

(Refrain)

Once he stood, in a bar room brawl
With a broken bottle in his hand
Screaming "F'yez all, F'yez all."

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The coppers came
Dragged him away from his crucified Lord
Beat him up in a meat wagon
And they stood him up in court
And all he had to say was "F'yez all."

In 1998, when I interviewed MacGowan, he said that the song described a man he saw while attending the dry-out program in Dublin. "He looked like a saint," he told me in his thick brogue. "But he was a drunk. He never said a word. He had been crushed by society."

"St. John of Gods" is a perfect example of the union of MacGowan's life and his lyrics. The title is also the name of the program MacGowan was in, one he describes in his autobiography as "a loony bin for alcoholic nutters." Apparently, MacGowan was on a particularly nasty drunk and blacked out after drinking "Long Island iced teas, Dublin Airport style." When he came to, he was in the midst of attacking a man who was trying to make his plane. But it was when he fell headlong into an old woman and her groceries that the police arrested him. In a classic "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" scenario, MacGowan was given a choice between getting sober in the "loony bin" or jail, and he chose the former. Once in, he was committed until he could prove that he'd mastered his demons. And it was there MacGowan saw the muse of his song, the crushed-up old man -- his "St. John of Gods."

When I asked MacGowan if the old man was symbolic of Ireland, he agreed that was one possible interpretation: "He's a figure of defiance through everything. That could be a metaphor for Ireland." But he denied that he saw himself in that old man, saying, "I've had an easy ride." Of course, I suspect on some level he did see himself in the man, having been recently arrested and committed. And it was his ability to empathize deeply with this fellow -- the sort that so many of us pass on the street and ignore on a daily basis -- that facilitated MacGowan's song. Certainly he is not the first to discover the spiritual in society's lost, but his song seems far more authentic because of the marriage of his talent and experience. Imagination is best when fueled by reality.

Granted, MacGowan isn't for everyone. Many hold their noses when they hear of his delight in the sewer, his peculiar Irish chauvinism and the bottomless hole in his jar of bevvy. But at least he takes you on a journey to places most writers today are too prissy to venture, whether physically or imaginatively. The Guardian reported recently that MacGowan's next album, tentatively titled "Twentieth Century Paddy," will be about Irish Republican Army men, solitary Irish farmers who hang themselves for want of a spouse, overdosed junkies and so on. Without a new Shane MacGowan album to look forward to, life would certainly be a hell of a lot more boring -- as it already is without Bukowski. But for the time being, we have MacGowan's offer from the "Crock of Gold":

It's more pricks
than kicks
That's what it is
I'm a scumbag,
a lout, that's the way
things are

But if you name me a street
Then I'll name you a bar
And I'll walk right through Hell
Just to buy you a jar

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