Desolation Row Lyrics - Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan

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 tightrope 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 pocket 

Bette Davis style 

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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's making love 

Or else expecting rain 

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And the good Samaritan, he's dressing 

He's getting ready for the show 

He's going to the carnival 

Tonight on Desolation Row 

Ophelia, she's 'neath the window 

For her I feel so afraid 

On her 22nd birthday 

She already is an old maid 

To her death is quite romantic 

She wears an ironed 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 

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 

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 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 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 shouting to skinny girls 

"Get out of 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 

And they bring them to the factory 

Where their 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 

Everybody's shouting 

"Which side are you on?" 

And Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot 

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 doorknob broke 

When you asked me how I was doing 

Was that some kind of joke? 

All these people that you mentioned 

Yes, I know them, they are 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