[Verse 1]
You’ve seen your bright visions of glory
Where love built your city on high
I have just seen your cold lower dungeons
Where the victims of syph roll and cry

They are called to this city of sorrow
To confess all the wrong things they’ve done
Their teardrops and weeping runs louder
Than my city blown down by the bombs

[Verse 2]
There’s a street named for every disease here
Syph Alley and Clap Avenue
And the whores and their pimps and their victims
Crawl past on the curbs in my view

Once young and once healthy and happy
Now a whirlpool of raving insane
Lost here in the wild V.D. City
Where nobody knows you by name

[Verse 3]
Your eye is too tested to see here
Worse than lepers your skin runs with sores
Every window stands full of lost faces
Human wrecks pile the steps and the doors
Must you pay your way to this city
With an hour of passion’s desire
I pray that I’ll not see your face here
Where the millions now burn in the fires