Spring Street

 They're sweeping up the leaves on Spring Street

Tidying away the trash

Painting it all in a varnish

White washing their laundry and cash

They're cleaning out the cupboards on Spring Street

Making room for a new family to move in

Leaving their reasons on the door step

Throwing their letters in the bin

The workmen are fixing the pipes

The arabs drink outside costa coffee

After one of them nearly got in a fight

With a man over who was wrong and who was right

"I was alone!" he kept shouting, passers by stop and watch

in the street

On the otherside of the road, they are all white

Oh they're sweeping up the leaves on Spring Street

The leaves keep falling on Spring Street

And my time is nearly done

The London road so busy under

A clouded sun

Red buses passing so gently,

Like ships in the night

Geezers and wheezers and two-time sneezers

Squeezing by left and right

And Spring Street is telling its story

Like a year that turns on without proof

That tomorrow all this will look different

That tomorrow we'll live a new truth

There are race wars down on Spring Street

White washing walls and blackening teeth

The French harangue Nelson's Column and greet

The Spaniards who fill Trafalgar square beneath

The Germans are daisy bombing all the banks

Shy dalmatian dogs are begging for homes giving thanks

To the carriages and scooters, and pizza delivery boys

Who are dropping them crusts as babies drop toys

And Spring street is looking lovely this time of year

As winter makes a mockery of flower sellers

And street singers recite sonnets of Juliet

And Romeo is on his balcony shaving his chest

And the circus is holding a strongman contest

Who is the most freakish, who's strength will win the day

Saint Crispin rides a steel mare upon the copper chains that lay

Around the step of the museum where sweet children play

And Spring Steet is looking quite clean this way

 

In the circus all kinds of animals are there

Elephants in castles in long suited trousers

And penguins who dance in pairs

I took a trip on the circle line

and found an anathema there

How could I be travelling straight

While I was going round and round?

It was all too much for me to believe

And then I saw Paddington bear

He had made a home for himself on the platform

And the stations of Charing cross were there

I counted old Kentish town and an opprobrium

As the farmers' step wives all lived there

The dogs were selling newspapers in the stands

And I bought one for a paw-pound

He said put the lines back in the prison

For that is where the sentence is found

A rabbit hopped on the rails of the barley

And swayed as the tannoy announced

The next train at platform three is

The two fifteen to Plymouth

And I stepped on the rights of the fare

Spring Street was smiling in the cold light

And Samantha had cut off her hair

Samson was her barber in the Turkish restaurant

Where fat men and young girls sat so fair

I tried to piece together the puzzle

Of its myriad strands and wefts

And I with cloven hoof and cleft palate

Let King Oedipus disappear

The ships will go down out of sight

As the horizon is gathering sunlight

And the broken eggshells of Spring Street

Show the first path where new lambs bleat