An extremely sardonic song, conveying a deep sense of disillusionment. The line about having "one foot in the graveyard and the other on the bus" is a familiar kind of Ian Anderson styling. He always liked to use familiar sayings, but put new twists on them in a kind of unexpected way. In this case, he is saying right from the beginning what the entire song gets across, which is that modern life in an urban big city is ugly and sordid, and it brings out the worst in people. The second verse communicates that in an unmistakable way, depicting the lust and fear that people seem so full of, with their "eyes upon each other and the locks upon their doors". The upshot of it all is that, in a setting like that, he feels like he is dying just like we are all dying. We are all just passing through.
An extremely sardonic song, conveying a deep sense of disillusionment. The line about having "one foot in the graveyard and the other on the bus" is a familiar kind of Ian Anderson styling. He always liked to use familiar sayings, but put new twists on them in a kind of unexpected way. In this case, he is saying right from the beginning what the entire song gets across, which is that modern life in an urban big city is ugly and sordid, and it brings out the worst in people. The second verse communicates that in an unmistakable way, depicting the lust and fear that people seem so full of, with their "eyes upon each other and the locks upon their doors". The upshot of it all is that, in a setting like that, he feels like he is dying just like we are all dying. We are all just passing through.