Visions of Johanna - Live at the ABC Theatre, Belfast, Ireland - May 1966

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
 Like silk 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