Trains Lyrics

Trains lyrics

In the sapling years

 Of the post war world in

 An English market town

 I do believe we traveleed

 In schoolboy blue

 The cap upon the crown

 And books on knee

 Our faces pressed against the

 Dusty railway carriage panes

 As all our lives went rolling

 On the clicking wheels of trains

 

 The school years passed

 Like eternity and at last were left behind

 And it seemed the city was calling

 Me to see what I might find

 Almost grown I stood before

 Horizons made of dreams

 I think I stole a kiss or two While

 Rolling on the clicking wheels of trains

 

 Trains all our lives were

 A whistle stop affair

 No ties or chains

 Throwing words like fireworks in the air

 Not much remains

 A photograph in your memory

 Through the colored lens of time

 All our lives were just a smudge of

 Smoke against the sky

 

 The silver rails spread

 Far and wide through

 The nineteenth century

 Some straight and true

 Soome serpentine from the cities to the sea

 And out of sight of those who

 Rode in style there worked the military mind

 On through the night

 To plot and chart

 The twisting paths of trains

 On the day they buried Jean Juarez

 World War One broke free

 Like an angry river overflowing

 Its banks impatiently

 While mile on mile

 The soldiers filled the railway

 Stations arteries and veins

 I see them now go laughing on

 The clicking wheels of trains

 

 Trains rolling off to the front

 Acorss the narrow Russian gauge

 Weeks turn into months

 And the enthusiasm wains

 Sacrifices in seas of mud

 And still you don't know why

 All their lives are just a puff of

 Smoke aginst the sky

 Then came surrender

 Then came the peace

 Then revolution out of the east

 Then came the crash

 Then came the tears

 Then came the thirties

 The nightmare years

 Then came the same thing

 Over again

 Mad as the moon

 That watches over the plain

 Driven insane

 

 But oh what kind of trains

 Are these that I never saw before

 Snatching up the refugees from

 The ghettoes of the war

 To stand confused

 With all their worldly goods

 Beneath the watching guard's disdain

 As young and old go rolling on

 The clicking wheels of trains

 

 And the driver only does this job

 With vodka in his coat

 And he turns around and

 He makes a sign

 With his hand across his throat

 For days on end through sun and snow

 The destination still remains the same

 For those who ride with death

 Above the clicking wheels of trains

 

 Trains what became

 Of the innocence they hand in childhood games

 Painted red or blue 

 When I was young they all had names

 Who'll remember the ones

 WHo only rode in them to die

 All their lives are just a smudge of

 Smoke against the sky

 

 Now forty years have come and gone

 And I'm far away from there

 And I ride the Amtrak from

 NewYork City to Philadelphia

 Now there's a man

 To bring you food and drink and

 SOmetimes passengers exchange

 A smile or two while rolling on

 The humming wheels

 But I can't tell you if it's them or if it's only me

 But I believe when they look outside

 They don't see what I see

 Over there beyond the trees

 It seems that I can just make out

 The stained fields of Poland

 Calling out to all

 The passing trains

 

 Trains I suppose there's nothing

 In this life remains the same

 Everything is goverened

 By the losses and the gains

 Still sometimes I get caught up

 In the past I can't say why

 All our lives are just a smudge of smoke

 Or just a breath of wind

 Against the sky


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