Bob Dylan
Visions of Johanna (Live at the Delta Center, Salt Lake City, Utah, February 21, 1995)
[Verse 1]
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks
When you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain tempting you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
The country music station plays soft
Nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
These visions of Johanna conquer my mind

[Verse 2]
Empty lot where the ladies play
Blindman's bluff with the keychain
The all-night girls, they whisper out on the "D" train
We can hear thе night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them, it's insane
Louisе, she's alright, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
She makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have taken my place

[Verse 3]
Little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
When bringing her name up he speaks of her farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lot of gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I'm in the hall
How can I explain? It's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, kept me up past the dawn
[Instrumental Break]

[Verse 4]
Inside the museums Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
The primitive wallflower freeze
The jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say "Jeez, I can't find my knees."
Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
Visions of Johanna make it all seem so cruel

[Verse 5]
The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
"Name me someone that's not a parasite
And I'll go out and say a prayer for him."
Like Louise always says "Ya can't look at much, can ya, man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him
Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler now steps to the road
He writes everything's been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
Oh, the harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
These visions of Johanna are now all that remain
[Outro]
These visions of Johanna are now all that remain