I am not a native speak but I would like to share my understanding. This song was released in 1989 so 65 years ago is the 1920s when a ship with the name " Empress of India" was likely to be a steam ship bound for the Far East, South&Southeast Asia or Australia. And when someone "picks upon the bones", he or she is picking the remainder of a body or corpse, which is quite melancholy. I think that the "bones of last week's news" is a metaphor for her missing for someone lost.

>Tracy Thank you very much I think "picking upon the bones" literary means "picking up his bones", but at the same time, it also means "noticing the outline (of the news)". How do you think?

I love this song too. As you may know his grandmother died from Alzheimers disease. I saw an interview with Costello, where he talked about how some days when he visited, she would be herself, and other days, she was no longer "herself" and seemed to be living in her own past. This part of the song is very poetic and figurative (and probably means different things to different people). For me, this is what I think it means: 65 years ago, Veronica was young and in love with a man who was on the ship (the empress of India), that shipwrecked (and he must have died). So after he died, her world changed - she closed her eyes upon the world (she shut everyone out and kept thinking about the horrible news of the shipwreck and his death). And the last sentence, she says his name out loud - which says that today, even though she is in this nursing home, her mind is replaying what happened 65 yrs ago.

>todd Thank you. It’s a precious information for us non-English speakers. But then, I want to know about this lyrics more and more.

I love Elvis Costello, who I think is a genius, and I even like this song -- and so I hope it makes you feel better that as a native English-speaker I also have no absolutely idea what it means.