[ELEANOR:]

slavin' away

all for you my love

and i've nothin to show for it

cept my dusty old book full of pictures

a dusty old book

tell me a story

bout how I wasn't so tired

from my slavin' away


i ran off

put on corduroy knickers that I got from the coal shovelin' kid

and hitchhiked in a rickety old Ford

hitchhiked in a rattly old norton side car

down strange roads

in the purrin' rain, as the poet put it

on up to St. Paul

on a cold day in the middle of the fall


and they picked me up for not wearin a dress

and suspended my sentence

if I wore somethin with a strap that was pink

and I scrubbed up on somebody's sink

so now I catch the canadian pacific

and not be too specific, just somewhere up north

and get into lumber and slumber when I like

and in the spring ride down into Cheyenne on my bike


[OLGA:]

I looked out the window

and I stuck my head out the door

and the snow was melting so slow...

and the sky was light but so gray...


[ELEANOR:]

slavin' away

and all for nothin' my love

cookin and washin in the morning

and startin at 9:25

I assemble six boxes of little plastic christmas trees

and put in the blue LEDs

on kid toy cell phones with borg batteries

and then on to the sewing machine

stick the labels on purple t-shirts

and the arms on pull-over jumpers for the UK


slavin' away

all for you my love

and I've nothin to show for it

i've nothin to show for it


I could see her lookin in the mirror at me

wonderin' if it wasn't plain for everyone to see

nothin ever seemed to turn out how it might be

I could see her doubting now that all had gone and went

that anything she got was equal what that she'd spent

that she never seemed to get back what that she'd lent


anyway they did have a son

and by the time he was married and I played at his wedding too at holy trinity

i was choir director myself

rehearsals in the basement twice a week

I demanded we'd be in peak condition

and everything seemed to be going quite well

I got along well with the priest...