For Bob Dylan

Ramblin' Bob Dylan Blues (For Bob Dylan) Why does the sun dry up so many scattered tears slipping down the coarse cheek of a million hushed fears where no one is scalded though the searing fog clears while prayers are mutely spoken even as the end nears We shatter and scrape on demented knees Blindly begging for mercy as it silently flees Searching listlessly for salvation drowned in the breeze That spits at the soft rose suffocated by a wheeze I know now what I need never have known Of hope that was trampled before it had flown Into a wasted sky filled with hate that could drown The giggling of the crowd and the crying of the clown A hope so fragile that its wings were of brittle glass Ripping the veneer off the sewers of class Twisting the fabric of the weighed and costed mass Who numbly waited hoping that it too may pass For when shards of that hope in all hearts scurries away To a darkness where crowded night is emptied off the heaving tray 'Tis then when sewn eyes shall behold that doleful day When all shall tear at each other while on demented knees we still shall pray For a lifting of the veil of that wilful deceit That's wrapped up in a flag swollen with conceit While the limbs splinter in the claw of a winner's defeat Yet still the drums roll for the ill-fated souls chose never to retreat From that drenched battle-ground where blood flows through a sieve And love's lost song plaintively begs for a reprieve From eternal loss which into raw emotion does cleave Only to slip through the fingers and like grains of sand, leave.