On the train you get smaller, as you get farther away.
The roar covers everything you wanted to say.
Was that a raindrop or a tear in the corner of your eye?
Were you drying your nails or waving goodbye?
Tom Waits, “2:19”
In “Madame George,” the second song of Side Two of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, I love it when Madame George says to the narrator, “Hey love, you forgot your gloves.”
And then the narrator, (rather than Madame George, I think) says
The gloves to love, to love the gloves
The gloves to love, to love the gloves
The gloves to love, to love the gloves
The gloves to love, to love the gloves
To say goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George.”
Wonder why about what?
In the last stanza, it’s as if the narrator has to self-hypnotize himself leave, as if he has to verbally will his very locomotion:
Get on the train
Get on the train, the train, the train
This is the train, this is the train
Whoa, say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Get on the train, get on the train.
Glove equals love, liltingly. Gloves sometimes wave goodbye.
Goodbye for good?
I don’t pretend to know what’s happening here, but it’s something very, very sad; we’re in a world of woe, outré, impressionistic, hypnotic.
You can feel the inarticulate hurt, and it’s bad to feel so good to know you’re not the only one hurting.
We’ve all felt this. This is the train. Get on the train. Dry your eyes. This is the bed. Get out of the bed. Put Visine in your eyes.
Your eyes, your eyes, your eyes.
You Do Hoodoo 
This is a beautiful song on a beautiful album. Van at his mystic-poet best. Sad and wistful but not maudlin. Check out Veedon Fleece if you haven’t (or even if you have).
Thanks! I don’t know Veedon Fleece so I’ll definitely check him out. Cheers!
I used to see Van’s albums in those advertisements to buy a couple CDs for dirt cheap. Then they’d send you a few more for premium prices to get their money back. I always thought Morrissey was he — and I used to wonder why his album was in the wrong section.
(p) No, I thought I would see Van Morrison’s CDs, but they’d be Morrissey’s. (p\). I used to always get those ads around Christmas. “No C.O.D.’s,” lol.