The Old Vale Slips Away

We were rich in Industry and workers once
A fast river feeding a millionaires mill town
The water remains with a steady beat, that sways
Echoing the Old Vale and its Glory days

The ghost of a cotton man on a grand Steinway
Fills the Arch at the bottom of India Street
Playing a sad soundtrack to a Steinbeck play
watching the old world slipping away

The Hall was full and so was the Strand
Brand new Art Deco superceded Victorian
In a crowd that Searched for Substance
A Panavision Packaged Future Proof Dance

Metropolis and the Shape of Things to Come
The organ piped up tall towards tomorrows tone
A paean to the future the Time Machine AD
but still the old world slipped away

When I close my eyes sometimes and stray
I smell Fyffes bakery down Mitchell Street Way
My eyes tighter together to force a dream
The railway is running through the steam

Broaching a balance through some inner eye
Grasping blindly toward horizons cry
Old Vale catches its breath, paradise stays
We meet again briefly, then lost, I slide away