Elsie's little friends don't come any more
with their little knuckles rapping at the door.
"Sorry girls, she can't come to play,
El's not feeling very well today"
Our neighbour found her walking in her sleep
through their onion patch on bruised and bloody feet
singing an unrecognisable
melody upon a voice not her own.
She saw it again - the apparition in the hall:
A heavyset man in old-fashioned railway uniform
carrying under one arm his blinking severed head,
the grey lips opening and closing
and the question they were posing
was 'where are you going?'
WHERE ARE YOU GOING???
We would later discover the previous owner
of this house was the former station-master
before the line was closed, after the war.
According to the knocker-upper he was only
a relatively young man and a brand new father
when he took his final step in front of a train
and with a squeal of brakes abruptly departed
body from brain.
Elsie was the first girl on the estate
to pass between the hallowed Royal Grammar gates
then onto Cambridge University
who paid a generous annual bursary.
Now she's an associate research analyst
two years at the London School of Economics
trying with a wayward husband
to keep a happy home and bring up her boy.
She saw him again - the apparition in the hall:
A heavyset man in old-fashioned railway uniform
carrying under one arm his blinking severed head,
the grey lips opening and closing,
and the question they were posing
is 'where are you going?'
WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
Lyrics provided by LRCLIB