Down Street

Dear friend you’ve come at last
I wish to impart to you something of a deeply personal nature
Dare we venture off the map
And indeed between the cracks
To a private road of sorts
I presume you have a strong will
And the stomach to match the underbelly of our fair city
You’ll need this firm crowbar
Whilst I implore you to utilise no sense of smell
And to think people live down there
A rush of chill air heralds our clattering necropolis railway
Like a Transylvanian express plunging into rivers of fungi algae and eels
Ten million rats, one for each one of us
And to think people live down there
A race of wild hogs inhabit the sewers of Hampstead
A cesspool suburb superb supreme
Catacombs of Kensal Green
I know you’d like to slime away
Like those walled up under Whitechapel
But I’ve my own kind of Jubilee line out of sight and out of mind
And to think you’ll have to live down there
Strangled streams, smothered rivers, London always gives me the shivers
Forty abandoned stations and Churchill’s last bolthole
Impregnable as Hitler’s bunker
Can’t you see them dancing on the platform at Down Street