Desolation Row
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
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.
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.
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.
Now 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 the penny whistle,
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 the 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 out of here if you don't know,
Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row."
Now 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.
Praise be to Nero's Neptune,
The Titanic sails at dawn.
And 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 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
Don't send me no more letters, no,
Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row
Sincerely.
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