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 into her back pocket Bette Davis-style.

And in comes Romeo, he’s moaning, “You belong to me, I believe.”

And someone turns and says to him, “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, they’re just pretending 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,

Everyone is either 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.

Ophelia, she’s ’neath the window, for her I feel so afraid,

On her twenty-second birthday she already is an old maid.

Now, to her death is quite romantic, she wears an iron vest,

Her profession is 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, some 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 locked inside of his 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,

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 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 shouts to skinny girls, “Get outta here if you don’t know

Casanova, he’s 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.

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 no one 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. 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 me 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 cannot read too well, don’t send me no more letters, no!

Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row.