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
Oh, was it you or was it me?
