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 fortunetelling 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 penny whistles   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   A 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 Outa 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