On the street where I live

(with apologies to Lerner and Lowe)

"I have often walked down this street before..."

and it's always littered with garbage and attended by a faint whiff of the open urinals that are the small streets leading us from here to the famous bazaar road that runs parallel to our street.

"But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before..."

There's no pavement here. Nor in in the streets that surround it. And in that famous bazaar, the pavement has been taken over by vendors, leaving no room to reach the shops from an auto that parks on the road.

"All at once am I, several storeys high..."
Knowing-just-what-it's-like-on-that-street.

"Are there lilac trees in the heart of town?

Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?"

"Does enchantment pour out of every door?"

No, it's not just the street where I live.

"People stop and stare, they don't bother me."

There's nowhere else on earth I wouldn't rather be.

Let the time go by, they don't care if I, can't bear the stench of the street where I live...

And oh the-ghastly-feeling, just to know they never clean here.

The ooooo-verpowering reeling from the smell that may suddenly appear..

"People stop and stare, they don't bother me."

If it made a difference to how clean my street might be

I would bus them here, show them how it feels

to walk here, on this street where I live.