Martin Simpson - Palaces of Gold lyrics

If the sons of company directors And judges' private daughters Had to got to school in a slum school Dumped by some joker in a damp back alley Had to herd into cla**rooms cramped with worry With a view onto slagheaps and stagnant pools Had to file through corridors grey with age And play in a crackpot concrete cage Chorus (after each verse): bu*tons would be pressed Rules would be broken Strings would be pulled And magic words spoken Invisible fingers would mould Palaces of gold If prime ministers and advertising executives Royal personages and bank managers' wives Had to live out their lives in dank rooms Blinded by smoke and the foul air of sewers Rot on the walls and rats in the cellars In rows of dumb houses like mouldering tombs Had to bring up their children and watch them grow In a wasteland of dead streets where nothing will grow I'm not suggesting any kind of a plot Everyone knows there's not But you unborn millions might like to be warned That if you don't want to be buried alive by slagheaps Pit-falls and damp walls and rat-traps and dead streets Arrange to be democratically born The son of a company director Or a judge's fine and private daughter