Lyrics Below the Vines - Paul McMahon

I slept out in the station ′cause it was too cold for the parks
I was on the line from the moon to the river
As the work-train slid like ice across the tracks to the sound of the whip and the hammer
And the children were sleeping below the vines in holes in the ground
In a thousand warrens, as I went down river clinging to a barge as the sun went down

I washed up on the side beside a briar below an old stone bridge and I laid the bet down
I rolled a three and I rolled back down onto the river
And the water veiled me over as the work-train slid like ice across the tracks
To the sound of the whip and the hammer
And the children began to dream, below the vines
In holes in the ground, in a thousand warrens
As I went down river clinging to a barge as the sun came up

As the sun came up it spun warm yolk onto the hillside
And the roads were lined with chain-gangs of tinkers stirring up drums of boiling tar
And the washer women came down to the banks
As the light spread across the sky and the work-train slid like ice across the tracks
To the sound of the whip and the hammer and the children awoke
Below the vines, in holes in the ground, in a thousand warrens
As I went down river clinging to a barge and the sun went down

The big black dome-sky spun around my head like a prostitutes skirt
And the stars flashes like lice and flitted around a swollen gonorrhoea-moon
As the work-train slid like ice across the tracks to the sound of the whip and the hammer
And in the freight cars peering out through tiny little cracks were the tiny little eyes
Made sleepy by the dreaming, below the vines, in holes in the ground
In a thousand warrens, as I went down river clinging to a barge and the water veiled me over