A conspicuous figure up Manchester way
Lives a clown who sits crying the daytime away,
And he sits and he sits and he sits and he sits,
And he sits and he cries twelve hours solid per day.

He resides on a highway verge deep in the grass,
And there seated, he gazes at cars as they pass,
And he sits and he sits and he sits and he sits
And he sits there in tears as they grind forth en masse.

He’ll sit there for England; he’ll sit there for France
But he can’t tell a joke and he can’t sing or dance,
So he sits and he sits and he sits and he sits
And he’s sat there all day and he hasn’t moved once.

Upon his top hat is an old, wilted rose,
Which is almost as grey as his sagged, tainted nose,
For he sits and he sits and he sits and he sits
In a colourless slump in his torn, tattered clothes.

The grey of his nose is his grim reputation;
His face is as bland as the hope of the nation.
He sits and he sits and he sits and he sits
In watchful dismay and forlorn meditation.

The cold, manic howling; the coarse, jarring leer;
The pantomime lips caked in clay but a sneer.
And he sits and he sits and he sits and he sits
In long 12-hour shifts every day of the year.

From time to time he will lift up his head
To hear birds singing sweetly up high overhead.
Though he sits and he sits and he sits and he sits,
He earnestly dreams to be flying instead.

He never will move (and no-one knows why)
From his one patch of green land to live, sit and cry.
He just sits and he sits and he sits and he sits
Inside nature’s last breath to ‘sit out’ her goodbye.