"'Deep Dark Truthful Mirror' has been played 

by the Rude 5 and then the Attractions,

and it's become a very tough R&B song. 

When you hear the skeletal version

on the record with two sets of piano 

and a tambourine for most of it, 

and then the Dirty Dozen Brass Band 

coming in, it's a very peculiar construction." 


[Record Collector, 1995] 







One day you're going to have to face
A deep dark truthful mirror
And it's going to tell you things that I still 
love you too much to say
The sky was just a purple bruise, 
the ground was iron
And you fell all around the town until you
looked the same

Chorus

The same eyes, the same lips, the same lie from
your tongue trips
Deep dark, deep dark truthful mirror
Deep dark, deep dark truthful mirror

Now the flagstone streets where the newspaper shouts 
ring to the boots of roustabouts
But you're never in any doubt 
there's something happening somewhere

You chase down the road 'til your fingers bleed
On a fiberglass tumbleweed
You can blow around the town, 
but it all shuts down the same

(chorus)

So you bay for the boy in the tiger-skin trunks
They set him up, set him up on the stool
He falls down, falls down like a drunk
And you drink 'til you drool
And it's his story you'll flatter
You'll stretch him out like a saint
But the canvas that he splattered 
will be the picture that you never paint

(chorus)

A stripping puppet on a liquid stick 
gets into it pretty thick
A butterfly drinks a turtle's tears, 
but how do you know he really needs it?

'Cos a butterfly feeds on a dead monkey's hand,
Jesus wept he felt abandoned
You're spellbound baby there's no doubting that
Did you ever see a stare like a Persian cat?

(chorus)