Dear Kiwi, Bob has a tendency to produce completely stunning songs (especially later) that have one or two verses that are throw-aways or just plain dumb. This is really irritating! It is like writing a Shakespearean sonnet and then tossing in a couple of lines for the hell of it. Maybe he just gets tired -- more likely arrogant carelessness. Anyway, a beautiful song, with some haunting intimations of fate -- rings, twins, one person believing in fate, the other tossing it off, a sudden change in the narrator raising questions about perspective on human control over events, sliding metaphors, etc. All tightly focuseed. Then comes the dreaded parrot verse:

"He hears the ticking of the clocks And walks along with a parrot that talks Hunts her down by the waterfront docks where the sailors all come in -- MAybe she'll pick him out again, how long must he wait, Once more for a simple twist of fate."

The first line is ominously banal, and everything goes downhill from there. The old sailors on the waterfront cliche! and the parrot...! The only justification for the parrot is as a kind of symbol of the man thinking of himself as a pirate or a lost sailor, which fits the theme. But in the context of the mood of the song, it is completely ridiculous (bathetic is the official term), and was obviously just put there to ease out the rhyme. The stupidity of it is easily compared to the last two lines, which are the chorus, and have the poetic weight of the rest of the song -- the paradox of waiting for the return of a past fate that didn't turn into fate after all (or maybe did). Sorry to go on. I hate this kind of thing. Angus McSweeney and I went away from the campfire and had a great heart-to-heart about Tim Hardin's "Lady Came from Baltimore" which seemed to me to be underwritten: but he convinced me that it has a feeling of a kind of brooding over, or working through material that saves it. Nothing saves this stupid parrot (cf. Monty Python!) Yours, Peter P.S. Joke: "Try great new Cream of Parrot Soup!! Parrot Soup is the only soup that asks for its own crackers!"