GRATEFUL DEAD - Desolation Row lyrics

rate me

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 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 spend 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 As 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 whistles you can hear then blow If you lean your head out far enough From Desolation Row