by 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 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 really 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?

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 jelly-faced 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