Visions of Johanna (Live from London 5/26/66)

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We'll 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
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off

Just Louise
And her lover, so entwined
And these visions of Johanna
That conquer my mind

In the empty lot where the ladies play blind man's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls, they whisper of escapades out on the D Train
We can hear the nightwatchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or them that's insane

Louise, she's alright, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she makes it all to concise and clear
That Johanna's not here

The ghost of electricity
Howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna
Have now taken my place

Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a 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

Oh, how can I explain?
It's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna
They've kept me up past the dawn

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

See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say "Jeez,
I can't find my knees"

Both jewels and binoculars
Hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna
They make it all seem so cruel

The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
Saying, "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"You can't look at much, can you man?" as she herself prepares for him

My Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he 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

The harmonicas play
The skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna
Are now all that remain