Lyrics

St. James Town

Banana boxes No Frills filled. Picture-proof
to the roof of European time killed.
Yeah, it took forever to pack when we left St. James Town.
I miss them green, gaunt, pale-faced days,
too planless to be afraid.
We were happy when left St. James Town.
Smell foreign cooking down the tenement halls,
familiar fights through contract deadline walls.
We were happy when we left St. James Town.

We took an elevator up and out a fat 50’s womb,
'economy of space' went the rhetoric of ruin
and now an underground parking garage is a polis' tomb.
15 megalith, beekeeper façades:
a filing cabinet on a tuft of sod.
So pregnant when we left St. James Town.
Borrowed passage from rent to money down;
debt leadeth us from our 33 storey town.
Nervous-happy, half-sure of ourselves when we left St. James Town.

Down leafy Parliament Money Mart way
To hear your sweet and sad complaints,
My life, my love, my saint of saints
My dark Rosaleen, you said
it’d be okay when we left,
you said it'd be okay when we left St. James Town.

Every other Thursday you’d get paid,
our communion cup at Swiss Chalet
with care-package coupons from our Trudeau parents.
Then reminiscent in a Danforth snug -
as close as you get to the Sligo stout;
and all couples: they never get bored of talking about where they met.
Then, beer-buzzed back in love over the Parkway
where the Sackville boats back into the clay.
We were happy when we left St. James Town.

Down leafy Parliament Money-Mart way
To hear your sweet and sad complaints,
My life, my love, my saint of saints
My dark Rosaleen, you said
it’d be okay when we left,
you said it'd be okay when we left St. James Town.