The Dampoor Express Poem by Billy Bennett

If you ever go to Dampoor by the Dampoor slow express
Be careful how you travel - try to fix
To start upon your journey from platform one or two
Or perhaps from platform three, four, five or six.

For the Dampoor sun is blazing hot - it blazes all the day
In this horrid heat no shelter can you find
Excepting one lone tree, and that is known for miles around
As the best pull-up for dogs of every kind.

There's only just one set of lines, and only just one train
So it does the journey both ways on one track
So if you chance to miss it just follow on behind
And you'll very likely meet it coming back.

But if you're in a hurry, you can just stay where you are
Unless you care to walk it for the fun
It's fifty miles to Dampoor, and it's fifty coming back
But you can do the lot in ninety if you run.

And when you get to Dampoor, if you ever do get there
You will find it where they lost it years ago
For nobody knows where it is, or what it is, or why
And nobody will ever want to know.

It's a place of mixed society, white, yellow, black and brown
Near the North-East West of Suez, and you can tell
The scene is laid in Suez, but the sewers are not laid
So the natives come to worship at the smell.

There's a gentleman in khaki, and another in plush fours
And another who's a nudist - you can trace
How his skin is tanned, and you can see how all his skin is tanned
Except - well, that's the custom of his race.

There are Kings and Queens, and Jacks and tens, and so forth and so on
And to tell you how they live I'm somewhat loth
Some are fat, and some are lean, some are dirty, some are clean
Some are men, and some are women - some are both.

When someone throws a party, it gets rough towards the end
And the husbands of their wives are all bereft
The single men go home with wives the husbands do not want
And the wives take any pansies that are left.

There's a dirty, low-down drunkard, who has wronged a painted doll
With a bullet in the tail-end of his spine
There's a woman with a broken heart, and dislocated neck
Who paints her housemaid's knees with iodine.

And this cur who bragged he'd dallied with the fairest of the fair
Had left them on their beam-ends - social wrecks
Who couldn't chew sufficiently to masticate his food
For he'd worn his teeth out biting barmaids' necks.

I had sworn to end his triumphs, so I followed him last night
I held him up and, gave him a warning
I shot him where the monkey used to gather all his nuts
And I'm off to Philadelphia in the morning.