Desolation Row
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1. They’re selling postcards of the hanging,
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they’re
painting the passports brown
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the
beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town.
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Here comes the
blind commissioner, they’ve got him in a trance,
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one
hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants.
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And the riot squad they’re restless, they
need somewhere to go,
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as
Lady and I look out tonight from Desolation
Row.
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2. Cinderella, she seems so easy, it takes one to know one, she smiles,
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and
puts her hands in her back pockets, Bette Davis style.
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And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning: You belong
to me, I believe,
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and someone says
you’re in the wrong place my friend,
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you
better leave.
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And the only sound that’s left
after the ambulances go,
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is
Cinderella sweeping up, on Desolation Row.
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3. Now, the moon is almost hidden, the stars
are beginning to hide,
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the
fortune telling lady has even taken all
her things inside.
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All except for Cain and Abel
and the hunchback of Notre-Dame,
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everybody is making love or else expecting rain.
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And the good
Samaritan, he’s dressing,
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he’s
getting ready for the show,
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he’s going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row.
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4. Now Ophelia, she’s ‘neath the window, for
her I feel so afraid,
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on her
twenty second birthday, she already is an old maid.
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To her, death is quite romantic, she wears
an iron vest,
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her profession’s her religion, her sin is
her lifelessness.
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And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah’s
great rainbow,
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she spends her
time peeking into Desolation Row.
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5. Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood, with his memories in a trunk,
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passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk.
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Now, he looked so immaculately
frightful, as he bummed a cigarette,
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then he went off,
sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet.
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You would not think to look at
him, but he was famous long ago,
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for playing the
electric violin on Desolation Row.
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6. Doctor Filth, he keeps his world, inside of a leather cup,
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but all his
sexless patients, they’re trying to blow it up.
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Now, his nurse, some local
loser, she’s in charge of
the cyanide hole,
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and she also keeps
the cards that read: Have mercy on his soul.
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They all play on a pennywhistle, you can hear them blow,
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if you
lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row.
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7. Across the street they’ve nailed the curtains,
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they’re
getting ready for the feast,
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the Phantom of the opera, in a perfect image of a priest.
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They’re spoonfeeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured,
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then they kill him
with self-confidence after poisoning him with words.
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And the Phantom’s shouting to skinny girls:
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Get outa
here if you don’t know,
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Casanova is just being punished
for going to Desolation Row.
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8. At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew
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come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do.
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Then they bring them to the factory, where the heart-attack
machine
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is strapped across
their shoulders, and then the kerosine
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is brought down
from the castles by insurance men who go,
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check to see that nobody is escaping to
Desolation Row.
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9. Praise be to Nero’s Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn,
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and everybody’s shouting: Which side are you
on.
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And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot,
fighting in the captain’s tower,
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while calypso
singers laugh at them, and fishermen hold flowers.
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Between the
windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow,
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and
nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row.
+ instrumental = verse
9
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10. Yes, I received your letter yesterday
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about
the time the doorknob broke,
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when you asked me how I was doing, was
that some kind of joke?
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All these people that you
mention,
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yes,
I know them, they’re quite lame,
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I had to rearrange their faces and give them
all another name.
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Right now I can’t read too good, don’t send
me no more letters, no,
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not unless you mail them
from Desolation Row.
+ instrumental = verse
10
(Bob Dylan)