Visions of Johanna
Bob Dylan

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 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 night watchman click his flashlight Ask himself if it's him or them that's realy insane
Louise, she's allright, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror (veneer)
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?
Oh, 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 jellyfaced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze,
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.