Desolation Row

[Verse 1]

They're selling postcards of the hanging

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

[Verse 2]

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'd better leave"

And the only sound that's left

After the ambulances go

Is Cinderella sweeping up

On Desolation Row

[Verse 3]

Now the moon is almost hidden

The stars are beginning to hide

The fortune-telling 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

[Verse 4]

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

[Verse 5]

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood

With his memories in a trunk

Passed this way an hour ago

With his friend, a jealous monk

Now 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

[Verse 6]

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world

Inside of a leather cup

But all his sexless patients

They are 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 the pennywhistle

You can hear them blow

If you lean your head out far enough

From Desolation Row

[Verse 7]

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 are spoon feeding 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 outta here if you don't know

Casanova is just being punished for going

To Desolation Row"

[Verse 8]

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

[Verse 9]

Praise 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

[Harmonica Solo]

[Verse 10]

Yes, I received your letter yesterday

About the time the doorknob broke

When you asked me how I was doing

Was that some kinda 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

Don't send me no more letters, no

Not unless you mail them

From Desolation Row

[Harmonica Outro]