Paradise

by John Prine



When I was a child, my family would travel

Down to western Kentucky where my parents were born.

And there's a backwoods old town that's often remembered

So many times that my memories are worn.



Cho: And Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County,

Down by the Green River where paradise lay?

Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin';

Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.



Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River

To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill,

Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols,

But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.



Cho.



Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel,

And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land.

Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken,

And they wrote it all down as the progress of man.



Cho.



When I die, let my ashes flow down the Green River,

Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam.

I'll be halfway to heaven with Paradise waiting,

Just five miles away from wherever I am.



Cho.