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I was the last of the window-cleaners

I was sacrificed as such

When they singled out the ring-leaders

They said I’d seen too much

But I only saw what the butler did

The chambermaid also

I only saw how the other half lived

I just washed their windows

Maybe up my ladder I got ideas above my station

Seldom if ever had a working man had a higher education

I learned to value clarity

And that knowledge is a two-way thing

That when windows attain transparency

Working men get a good look in

But times are bad for window-cleaners

Worse than the 1930s

If it’s not cowboys and amateurs

Who don’t know where the dirt is

It’s our most powerful customers

Who’ll wipe us out eventually

They’ve lost the taste for clarity

In the late 20th century

They took away our permits

And imposed a window tax

People became like hermits

Sitting in their pitch black flats

And though we remained intransigent

And our pride in the work lived on

There was a series of mysterious accidents

And we died off one by one

I was the last of the window-cleaners

After the union was smashed

They found the corpses of the other ring leaders

Their fingers had been crushed

I received anonymous letters threatening attack

They struck at the Limehouse dock

Up drew a horse-drawn hackney cab

It was well past twelve o’clock

Out came a man with a lantern

Saying he’d come to light me to bed

Saying something to do with a chopper

And something to do with my head

But I wasn’t listening carefully

There were other things on my mind

The failure of the union

The future of mankind

He spread his frock coat flat on the quay

And began positioning me there

Laid me back almost tenderly and flourished a butcher’s cleaver

I shouted past him into the dark 'We're prepared to make concessions'

But the blade he twisted in my heart

Ended my profession

But times are bad for window-cleaners

Worse than the 1930s

If it’s not cowboys and amateurs

Who don’t know where the dirt is

It’s our most powerful customers

Who’ll wipe us out eventually

They’ve lost the taste for clarity

In the late 20th century

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