It’s nine o’clock on the Zocalo
The romantic Paseo goes down
The socialists, spooks and cold warriors
Are buying another round
Veterans of the Spanish Civil War
Both sides, loyal and not
They all gather and drink together
Because now that’s all that they’ve got
They sit with the retired case officers
From the CIA and the OSS
Men who pursued them for decades,
Now looking for a place to rest
There’s Margaret, who loves her square dancing
Once married to the station chief
Who looked after our interests in Chile
When Allende was El Jefé
She said “I still remember the generals,
They were all such handsome men,
They danced just like Astaire in the movies,
Especially Gustavo Leigh Guzman
Leigh it was who first thought of,
Then put into practice as well
The idea of dropping young students
Out of Beechcrafts into the swell
There was Bill, the old CIA man
Who carried a gun when he drank
He’d flag random cars in the Zocalo
To take him home when he stank
There was my friend Captain John Yancey
US Marine Corps (Retired)
He had taken 3 bullets to the face in Korea
He was the bravest man alive
There were Ruth and Beryl Becker
New Yawkers to the bone
They had fled the US from McCarthy
For decades they called Mexico home
There was big gorgeous Gail from Tulsa
Miss Oklahoma 1965
She was one of my girlfriends
A beauty at six foot five
There were Kathy and Jean the twosome
No one could pry them apart
I managed to crack open Kathy
And she gave me a piece of her heart
There was Matt, my pal from the city
He knew all the hookers in town
We would buy our weed together
From a highway patrolman we found
One day alone in the Zocalo,
Enjoying a lemon flan
I saw a Mercedes, Henry Kissinger in it
Escorting the Shah of Iran
Joni Mitchell was in town visiting
Charlie Mingus, who lived there
She was supposed to be recording an album
But she never came up for air
I had to leave that magic town
I returned to the cold of Quebec
But when it’s 9 o’clock on the Zocalo
All my memories come flooding back