Copyright © 1982, 1998, 2010 Jack Hardy Music (BMI)
i have lost my coat on the road today cries the man of constant sorrow ruin has him in the wind at last cries the wolf of time merchant make a cloth for a sinner man finer than the one that he lost but it is nothing to the state of the inner man though the wolf goes hungry again cries the wolf of time tomorrow my house has burned down to the ground cries the homeless man of sorrow ruin has him in the wind at last cries the wolf of time build a new house for a sinner man stronger than the one that he lost but it is nothing to the state of the inner man though the wolf goes hungry again cries the wolf of time tomorrow i have lost my gold in the river drowned cries the wealthy man of sorrow ruin has him in the wind at last cries the wolf of time but the boatman has hope for a sinner man says you still got you your health but it is nothing to the state of the inner man though the wolf goes hungry again cries the wolf of time tomorrow i have lost my son my only son cries the worldly man of sorrow ruin has him in the wind at last cries the wolf of time but he's gone to the father of all sinner men in a far far better world but it is nothing to the state of the inner man though the wolf goes hungry again cries the wolf of time tomorrow i have lost my name my only name cries the vagabond of sorrow ruin has him in the wind at last cries the wolf of time but the mirror don't frighten no sinner man blood blackens on hope's last door but it is nothing to the state of the inner man though the wolf goes hungry again cries the wolf of time tomorrow
summer in southern colorado where the sweat dries too fast and too neat a man was just paid by the government not to harvest all his field but he already sent for his workers they slipped into town overnight praises be to heaven if no one dies tonight (chorus:) all the second class citizens on second thought they are not citizens at all are we all really citizens are we citizens at all citizens sam's got a wife in cerritos just north of the city of sun he's got him five sons and three daughters 'cause down there there's only one kind of fun he was going to send them the money just a few dollars that august allowed it might be enough for the hungry though never enough for the proud and you who enjoy your summers in colorado you who escape all the heat and you who enjoy your bread buttered on both sides of commodities you who are along for the season you who are along for the ride you who are asking the reason that someone named sam has just died (repeat chorus)
the wind it sounds like voices tonight (adieu mon ami) thinking i was alone it gave me a fright (adieu mon ami) i thought i'd see an old friend who lived down by the sea a fisher of men and of me but it's far more frightening to find you are alone when i came to the place where his light had shone nobody home the windows are stained with that glassy-eyed stare (adieu mon ami) the door set ajar with the whistling air (adieu mon ami) those rooms so vacant the paint so wrong the holes in the floors that were strong that used to hold so much such art such dreams such life has turned into stone nobody home the wind it sings much softer now (adieu mon ami) though my heart is pounding twice as loud (adieu mon ami) all those voices will never be heard those days have all disappeared and all the while my fears are fed they might as well be dead and gone nobody home
there you go down that road again saying all the things you said you'd never say again dreaming all the dreams that you can never grasp asking all those questions you should never ask (chorus:) say so long fare thee well i wish you well good good-bye fare thee well i wish you well i wish you well as you leave on your journey but as you leave if you think of returning remember me you are young in your prime and yet old enough to see not too many take you seriously they tell you not to question all that you're told time enough for that when you'll be getting old (repeat chorus) they say you're not old enough to be in love money is the only thing that dreams are made of so save yourself and save your wealth for when you get old this rat-race town is going to claim your soul (repeat chorus)
i am an orphan from madrid i pass my night in search of homes and though the people try to keep me hid and preach against me i am never alone i am the black sheep huddled in a sad café arguing with aphrodite to forsake her name late at night we listen to the radio for a song that i used to sing so long ago and i tell to her all of my foreign dreams and who will find for me a home when i was young i moved to rome with a dog who tagged along i knew his dreams to that ancient city built on bones and all those temples built to gods obscene i am the black-shirted knight who plays the game though the left-wingéd newspapers slander my name they'll learn the pen is not always stronger than the sword and that thoughts are not always put down with words i search the streets for the order that chaos brings and who will find for me a home and so i moved north to cologne and bonn and munich where i could spend the spring in many places my light has shown the golden box to which i now hold the strings in the blackened night the stars will appear those dim-lit cellars cry out calling with their beer i spend my afternoons walking at the zoo all those birds of carnage caged and crying turn me loose a crowd of people can never think alone and who will find for me a home i am an orphan from madrid and who will find for me a home
come all ye lads and lasses near a story i will tell to you about a cold damp night like this when shelter i was seeking a traveler passing through the barkeep said to guard my coin to stay away from this tinker but that just brought me near to him for naught had i worth taking a traveler passing through he bought me a glass of darkened stout to thank me for my company and he dropped a penny in the glass for the luck that it would bring to me a traveler passing through the poor have but their pennies left the king his saxon shilling the king would never part with his though i part with mine most willing to a traveler passing through (chorus:) this coin's been haunted by the sidhe* it shall bring you joy or bring you grief depending on the works you do what once was mine now belongs to you to a traveler passing through we passed the night most forcefully i sang my songs and his to me and we talked of life's brief song to sing of visions we'd forsaken as travelers passing through and the barkeep said it's time with scorn your man here will be your undoing they will lock you up as sure as you are born if they hear the song you're singing a traveler passing through they can lock me up as best they can yet songs can never know those chains the song is sacred as the wind we are just the harp that's singing a traveler passing through (repeat chorus) and later in a highland pub with friends around me singing i chanced to glance into my glass at another penny shining a traveler passing through (repeat chorus)*the sidbe (pronounced "shee") is the Irish fairy world
through the hills of pennsylvane through the state of ohio as far as the southern bend of the muddy old saint joe to build a home a blacksmith and his family of nine in the days we came to know as forty-nine shoeing horses building wagons for the road he taught his sons to build a wheelbarrow oh that wheelbarrow you're going to roll there's one in every crowd sown with the wild oats and johnny was the one who said he had to go i'm leaving home though his pappy pleaded stay with us and work and his momma cried you don't know what is worth sewing sixteen silver dollars in his belt one for every year his youth could tell oh that wheelbarrow you're going to roll (chorus:) and it's roll johnny roll roll across the plains and it's ride johnny ride don't hold back on the reins there's gold johnny gold off in the hangtown hills and you'll sail home around cape horn with your pockets lined with gold he landed in the promised land in what's now called placerville though then it was known as hangtown for the dreams that it killed i miss my home these city-slickers don't know 'bout the land they don't know how to work with their hands sifting for the gold through the sand gambling and stealing all they can oh that wheelbarrow you're going to roll (repeat chorus) his fingers to the bone his belly filled with stone he never found the gold he sold off all he owned i'm heading home you only own what you carry in your soul and i'm carrying the weight of told you so when this man said by chance you wouldn't know how to build me a strong wheelbarrow oh that wheelbarrow you're going to roll (repeat chorus) before the first was done word had gotten 'round he had to build one now for every man in town this ain't my home but a friend is made fast with good work giving more than you promise in worth the one place he never looked for the gold he sold fifty thousand dollars worth of wheelbarrows oh that wheelbarrow you're going to roll (repeat chorus) now gold is where you find it before you know it's spent and a windfall's like a rainfall you don't know where it went i'm working home but a gambler's got to learn how to work and a worker's got to gamble all he's worth now johnny rides around with presidents while you're still worrying how to pay the rent oh that wheelbarrow you're going to roll (repeat chorus) oh that wheelbarrow you're made of gold
it was not such a small town in the antebellum north built on the factory sounds before that war time-clock faith in material the tractors and contractors of wealth where they called the juleps manhattans and prejudice was called the help (chorus:) who would believe naively that these things are perpetual all of it's gone to hell perhaps it's just as well lost in the miniature teacups the umbrella-shielded sun listening to the piano boom napoleon's gathering guns as i lay quietly quilted on that screened-in porch i knew listening to the cicadas sing not knowing they were doomed (repeat chorus) on the lawn they sipped their cocktails diversions of fairplay and talked of factories closing while arguing grass or clay with the elm trees slowly dying on the stately avenues the evening silence shattered when the factory whistle blew (repeat chorus) but the bicycles got bigger and the circles they grew small and the frantic voices beckoned somewhere beyond the wall the seventeen-year locusts were leaving behind their shells when the ice-cream truck bell tolled the garden to hell (repeat chorus)
in the merry merry month of may when flowers were a-blooming when we commence our tale not all the lads were laughing for some offense or other they were in the habit a lot of hanging poor lads and lasses whether they be guilty or not (chorus:) let's stop... have another round to help us make the next verse go down there's method to the madness of the grape and grain that we might live to drink again they would march them from the prison to the seedier side of town just after the sun had risen to the scaffold and the trap door sound now this often scorned-at publican would stop the whole procession and offer a slight libation as christ's own load was lessened (repeat chorus) and many had one last chaser but one poor lad was prudent he declined his one last bracer claiming he was innocent and they all said on with the task and his neck went up on a string and as he kicked his last came a pardon from the king (repeat chorus) so the moral of this story is never refuse a drink and drink it nice and slowly and let the glasses clink and here's a song to use when you are in your cups and they tell you quit your booze just tell them "drink it up" (repeat chorus)
i took a tree into the town to see if it would grow not knowing i was affixed to the fate of the seed i'd sown my roots are solid underground fed by the warm spring rain where thunder's fierce and fickle winds find compromise insane (chorus:) i seek refuge in this tree of rhyme into its arms i climb frightened by the terror of the scythe there will be peace with the wind and rain the roundness of the earth and flame this tree is more constant than i this tree is more constant than i my tree has flourished the same as i though invisible at times beneath the rubble of vacant eyes the seed divides and climbs as if part of a forgotten age when business was a vice and virtue was merely picking fruit in some patient paradise (repeat chorus) i pity those without a tree as birth has doomed no one for bricks are merely mud and straw and canals are just rivers won for nature schemes in cracks and seams waiting for a time to bloom even down in that soot gray town in some forgotten room (repeat chorus)
there were only five there with their hat-in-their-hand prayers towards glasnevin green in the rain as we sat in the béal bocht eating our soup stock erasing our dreams as a game arguing verses as to whose was the best and who were the five when they laid him to rest (chorus:) and i was wondering what it would take to make you break down and cry all has changed now all has changed the curse is wondering why still i am wondering when i hear the children sing in these olden days in those golden days when we were all in love with all that was witching and all that was winning with women writing those vain verses that students write for lovers but after the wine comes it's vinegar brother (repeat chorus) in those final days in those banal days when reality caught us dreaming and humbled by hunger and that daily asking for bread or a stone writing our verses in vain with desire that the nurses sweep into that rewriting fire (repeat chorus) one potato two potato three potato four what we gonna do when there isn't any more
sing hallelujah for the guttersnipe lives he's not at all behind all your middle-class ways cry no, i am drowning for i cannot forgive for all wealth is measured in stacks of days pigeons and peons bear the laurel wreath my head is pounding on the door of my heart placing reason as an icon of grief turned wretched as a gargoyle drenched in the dark drenched in the dark the guttersnipe stares with an altar-boy smile the glare of irrelevance as they taunt him and tease him crying from the wilderness of middle-class style they watch his boat as it sinks into knowledge over those youthful dreams sunk deep in the fruit learning patience is no virtue it's a vice they were so far ahead they were known as truth staring at prisms of light and prisons of life prisons of life where the prison flowers shrink from lack of love examine the freedom, that pain in your stem is there no relief outside the gates of enough? only pigeons seeking crumbs where the guttersnipe's been the love of old ladies and disease of young maids they make children smile as they scatter with the wind filth is the fever of the middle-class mind all wrapped up in waste and wealth and in wine wealth and wine tell me of your passions, you slimy small waif with your big toe in the water and your throat full of thirst there is nothing to repeat of the miseries of hate they are your wealth and your redemption for sinning in this foul-smelling hell-hole where the guttersnipe dines with desire rubbing bellies with disgrace and disease endless stairways out of the squalor to climb with dreams void of color, forced to their knees forced to their knees the radiant smile of the catholic queen has sent chills into believers like a dangling rope tied to the trunk of a century-old tree in a forest of drunk dropping breadcrumbs for hope black candles, black roses, the givers of false light the saint of prostitution and the sacrament of fright how they drip so fast, forcing the middle-class flight the forgers of freedom and the sorcerers of the night sorcerers of the night no way to play the tunes on the stench of winter winds where the notes form in agony, blunt and tortured within others who had paid the price write back of legends with imagery of topcoats dragged through alleys of sin pleasing little puppets with their thank-you-ma'am smiles taking train-rides to excellence, keeping journals of each smile but always riding first class so as to not leave home and claiming every discount 'cept the one left alone the one that's always left alone sing hallelujah for the guttersnipe breaks bread those hands that hold the loaves in the windows of hope all twisted and warm with the honesty of death and yearning for mouths all hungry and cold a moment of silence for the guttersnipe lives your companion in dreams refuses to smile his wealth is the fact that he has nothing to give as he beckons your madness to enter his trial enter his trial long into the late hours of winter afternoons so callused and thick-skinned in his cradle of cold all shivering and shaking with his outstretched tongue and swearing at indifference with a penicillin grin his song is distilled from deceit and despair the burden of destiny from sorrows and sins those beautiful eyes sunk in the wilderness of care and a voice from within cries i am here i am here