If the sons of company directors
an d judges' private daughters
Had to go to school in a slum school,
Dumped by some joker in
a damp back alley.
Had to herd into classrooms
cramped with worry,
With a view over slag heaps
and stagnant pools.
Had to file through corridors
grey with age,
And play in a crackpot concrete
cage.
Buttons would be pressed,
rules would be broken,
strings would be pulled,
and magic words spoken.
Invisible fingers would mold
palaces of gold.
If Prime Ministers,
and advertising executives,
royal personages,
and bank managers' wives
Had to live out their lives
in dank rooms,
blinded by smoke and a foul air of sewers
Rot on the wall and rats in the cellars,
in rows of dumb houses
like mouldering tombs
had to bring up their children
an d watch them grow,
in a wasteland of dead streets
where nothing would grow.
Buttons would be pressed,
rules would be broken,
strings would be born,
and magic word s spoken.
Invisible fingers would mould
palaces of gold.
Now I'm not suggesting any
sort of a plot,
everyone knows
there's not.
But you unborn
And millions might like
to be warned
If you don't want to be buried alive
by slaggings
Pitfalls and damp walls
and rat traps and dead streets
Arranged to be democratically born
The son of a company director
Or a judge's fine and private daughter
And buttons will be pressed
And rules will be broken
Strings will be pulled
And magic words spoken
Invisible fingers will mould
Palaces of gold.