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Desolation Row

As performed by the Grateful Dead

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

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