They're selling postcards of the hanging
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They're painting the passports brown
|
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
|
The circus is in town
|
Here comes the blind commissioner
|
They've got him in a trance
|
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
|
The other is in his pants
|
And the riot squad they're restless
|
They need somewhere to go
|
As Lady and I look out tonight
|
From Desolation Row.
|
|
Cinderella, she seems so easy
|
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
|
And puts her hands in her back pockets
|
Bette Davis style
|
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
|
"You belong to Me I Believe"
|
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
|
You better leave"
|
And the only sound that's left
|
After the ambulances go
|
Is Cinderella sweeping up
|
On Desolation Row.
|
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Now the moon is almost hidden
|
The stars are beginning to hide
|
The fortunetelling lady
|
Has even taken all her things inside
|
All except for Cain and Abel
|
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
|
Everybody is making love
|
Or else expecting rain
|
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
|
He's getting ready for the show
|
He's going to the carnival tonight
|
On Desolation Row.
|
Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
|
For her I feel so afraid
|
On her twenty-second birthday
|
She already is an old maid
|
To her, death is quite romantic
|
She wears an iron vest
|
Her profession's her religion
|
Her sin is her lifelessness
|
And though her eyes are fixed upon
|
Noah's great rainbow
|
She spends her time peeking
|
Into Desolation Row.
|
|
Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
|
With his memories in a trunk
|
Passed this way an hour ago
|
With his friend, a jealous monk
|
He looked so immaculately frightful
|
As he bummed a cigarette
|
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
|
And reciting the alphabet
|
You would not think to look at him
|
But he was famous long ago
|
For playing the electric violin
|
On Desolation Row.
|
|
Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
|
Inside of a leather cup
|
But all his sexless patients
|
They're trying to blow it up
|
Now his nurse, some local loser
|
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
|
And she also keeps the cards that read
|
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
|
They all play on penny whistles
|
You can hear them blow
|
If you lean your head out far enough
|
From Desolation Row.
|
Across the street they've nailed the curtains
|
They're getting ready for the feast
|
The Phantom of the Opera
|
In a perfect image of a priest
|
They're spoonfeeding Casanova
|
To get him to feel more assured
|
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
|
After poisoning him with words
|
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
|
"Get outa here if you don't know"
|
Casanova is just being punished for going
|
To Desolation Row.
|
|
At midnight all the agents
|
And the superhuman crew
|
Come out and round up everyone
|
That knows more than they do
|
Then they bring them to the factory
|
Where the heart-attack machine
|
Is strapped across their shoulders
|
And then the kerosene
|
Is brought down from the castles
|
By insurance men who go
|
Check to see that nobody is escaping
|
To Desolation Row.
|
|
They be to Nero's Neptune
|
The Titanic sails at dawn
|
Everybody's shouting
|
"Which side are you on ?"
|
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
|
Fighting in the captain's tower
|
While calypso singers laugh at them
|
And fishermen hold flowers
|
Between the windows of the sea
|
Where lovely mermaids flow
|
And nobody has to think too much
|
About Desolation Row.
|
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
|
About the time the door knob broke
|
When you asked me how I was doing
|
Was that some kind of joke ?
|
All these people that you mention
|
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
|
I had to rearrange their faces
|
And give them all another name
|
Right now I can't read too good
|
Dont send me no more letters no
|
Not unless you mail them
|
From Desolation Row.
|
|
-----------------
|
Desolation Row
|
Bob Dylan |