1 They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown

2 The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town

3 Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance

4 One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants

5 And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go

6 As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row

8 Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one, " she smiles

9 And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style

10 And in comes Romeo, he's moaning. "You Belong to Me I Believe"

11 And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave"

12 And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go

13 Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row

15 Now the moon is almost hidden, the stars are beginning to hide

16 The fortune telling lady has even taken all her things inside

17 All except for Cain and Abel and the hunchback of Notre Dame

18 Everybody is making love or else expecting rain

19 And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing, he's getting ready for the show

20 He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row

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

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

24 To her, death is quite romantic she wears an iron vest

25 Her profession's her religion, her sin is her lifelessness

26 And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow

27 She spends her time peeking into Desolation Row

29 Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk

30 Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk

31 Now he looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette

32 And he when off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet

33 You would not think to look at him, but he was famous long ago

34 For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row

36 Dr. Filth, he keeps his world inside of a leather cup

37 But all his sexless patients, they're trying to blow it up

38 Now his nurse, some local loser, she's in charge of the cyanide hole

39 And she also keeps the cards that read, "Have Mercy on His Soul"

40 They all play on the penny whistles, you can hear them blow

41 If you lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row

43 Across the street they've nailed the curtains, they're getting ready for the feast

44 The Phantom of the Opera in a perfect image of a priest

45 They are spoon feeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured

46 Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words

47 And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls, "Get outta here if you don't know"

48 Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row"

50 At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew

51 Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do

52 Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine

53 Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene

54 Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go

55 Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row

57 Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn

58 Everybody's shouting, "Which side are you on?!"

59 And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower

60 While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers

61 Between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow

62 And nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row

64 Yes, I received your letter yesterday, about the time the doorknob broke

65 When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke

66 All these people that you mention, yes, I know them, they're quite lame

67 I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name

68 Right now, I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no

69 Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row