Life in a Tenement Square

Well, I kissed the day, I was on my way From those cold gray blocks of stone For seventeen years of squalor filled tears A time now with innocence lost As the sun split the room With its rays filled with gloom Turnin' all hope to despair And the only thing left was to flee from the nest That was life in a Tenement Square I remember the song where the rats sang along And danced for their daily bread While the damp washed the walls that were twenty feet tall Not a child in the house was fed On the porter filled face, of the men left a trace Of the coin they had already spent While our mothers asked God, "What was Hell ever for When you lived in a Tenement Square?" Grab what's left of the coal from the ol' cubbyhole These cinders need more to be a fire While the ghosts of the soldiers that lived there before us Laugh with their guns by their side I hear them laugh with their guns by their side Now politicians they dwell in that forgotten hell Our misery's been turned into mews Where the fat of the land, now hog, hand-in-hand A crime now of life was ever true As the sun split the room with its rays filled with gloom Turnin' all hope to despair And the only thing left was to flee from the nest That was life in a Tenement Square