I WON'T PLAY

VISIONS OF JOHANNA - DYLAN, SMBOLIST POET

 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 doin' our best to deny it And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' 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 blindman's bluff with the key chain And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight Ask himself if it's him or them that's insane Louise, she's all right, she's just near She's delicate and seems like the mirror But she just makes it all too concise and too clear That Johanna's not here The ghost of 'lectricity 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 lotta 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, they 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 musta 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" Oh, 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 Sayin', "Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him" But like Louise always says "Ya can't look at much, can ya man?" As she, herself, prepares for him And 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 ev'rything'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 #BobDylan #Folk #SingerSongwriter

Music in this video

THE PARADOX OF LOVE

 I know you loved me today

But we're moving away

Both to some distant place

...

Losing's really no disgrace

We'll find another place

And you'll see my face

As your own

You really are my home

And I am your paradise

And when I look into your eyes

I see your face as mine

You know I loved you today

But now you've gone away

I'll still love you tomorrow

So feel no sorrow

We both must find our home

So now we have to roam

In the shadows

With trains passing

We have our Paradise

We both lived it alive

With gold in our bookshelves

And God in your eyes

And so you live across the sea

5,000 miles from me

It's the paradox of love

That I love you anyway.

W.G. Milne