Of war and peace the truth just twists.
Its curfew-gull, it glides.
Upon four-legged forest-clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun,
Though its glow is waxed in black –
All except when 'neath the trees of Eden.
The lamp-post stands with folded arms,
Its iron claws attached
To curbs 'neath holes where babies wail,
Though its shadow's metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing, but meaningless blow
1.
No sound ever comes from the gates of Eden.
The savage soldier sticks his head in sand
And then complains
Unto the shoe-less hunter who's gone deaf,
But still remains
Upon the beach, where hound dogs bay
At ships with tattooed sails,
Heading for the gates of Eden.
With a time-rusted compass blade,
Aladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit-monks
Sidesaddle on the Golden Calf.
And, on their promises of paradise,
You will not hear a laugh –
All except inside the gates of Eden.
Relationships of ownership,
They whisper in the wings
To those condemned to act accordingly
And wait for succeeding kings.
And I try to harmonize with songs
The lonesome sparrow sings.
There are no kings inside the gates of Eden.
The motorcycle, Black Madonna,
Two-wheeled, gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray-flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey,
Who pick up on his breadcrumb sins.
And there are no sins inside the gates of Eden.
The kingdoms of experience,
In the precious winds they rot
While paupers change possessions,
Each one wishing for what the other has got.
And the princess and the prince discuss
What's real and what is not.
It doesn't matter inside the gates of Eden.
The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign,
Leaving men wholly, totally free
To do anything they wish to do, but die.
And there are no trials inside the gates of Eden.
At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means.
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what's true.
And there are no truths outside the gates of Eden.
1
In Lyrics, these lines are transcribed: "The lamppost stands with folded arms, / Its iron claws attached / To curbs 'neath holes, where babies wail, / Though it shadows metal badge, / All and all, can only fall / With a crashing, but meaningless blow...". This sentence cannot be parsed as it is and the problem lies in the transcription, specifically the phrase, "[t]hough it shadows metal badge", which should include an s after "it". It perhaps makes sense then to interpret the s as the possessive clitic 's and, in turn, to parse "its shadow's metal badge" as the subject of the subordinate clause beginning with "[t]hough". For a fuller discussion of this verse, see Paul Williams's interpretation in his book Bob Dylan: Performing Artist 1986–1990 & Beyond, pg. 122.