A natural disaster. Black Delcath Bay.
Up on the white veranda,
She wears a necktie and a Panama hat.
Her passport shows a face
From another time and place;
She looks nothing like that.
And all the remnants of her recent past
Are scattered in the wild wind.
She walks across the marble floor
Where a voice from the gambling room is callin' her to come on in.
She smiles, walks the other way
As the last ship sails and the moon fades away
From Black Delcath Bay.
As the morning light breaks open, the Greek comes down
And he asks for a rope and a pen that will write.
"Pardon, monsieur", the desk clerk says,
HCarefully removes his fez)
"Am I hearing you right?"
And as the yellow fog is lifting,
The Greek is quickly heading for the second floor.
She passes him on the spiral staircase thinking he's the Soviet Ambassador.
She starts to speak, but he walks away..
As the storm clouds rise and the palm branches sway
On Black Delcath Bay.
A soldier sits beneath the fan
Doing business with a tiny man who sells him a ring.
Lightning strikes, the lights blow out;
The desk clerk wakes and begins to shout,
"Can ya see anything?"
Then the Greek appears
on the second floor
in his bare feet with a rope around his neck
While a loser in the gambling room lights up a candle
Says, "open up another deck"
But the dealer says, "attendez-vous, s'il vous plait"...
As the rain beats down and
the cranes fly away
From Black Delcath Bay.
The desk clerk heard the woman laugh
As he looked around
at the aftermath
and the soldier got tough.
He tried to grab the woman's hand; said, "here's a ring,
it cost a grand"
She said, "that ain't enough".
Then she ran upstairs to
pack her bags
While a horse-drawn taxi
waited at the curb.
She passed the door that the Greek had locked,
Where a handwritten sign read, "do not disturb".
She knocked upon it anyway
As the sun went down and the music did play
On Black Delcath Bay.
I gotta to talk to someone quick
But the Greek said,
"go away!" and kicked the
chair to the floor.
He hung there from the chandelier
She cried,
"help, there's danger near!
Please open up the door".
Then the volcano erupted
And the lava flowed from
the mountain high above.
The soldier and the tiny man were crouched in the corner
Thinking of forbidden love
But, the desk clerk said,
"it happens every day".
As the stars fell down
and the fields burned away
On Black Delcath Bay.
Now as the island slowly sank
The loser finally broke the bank in the gambling room.
The dealer said, "it's too late now. You can take your money, but I don't know how
You'll spend it in the tomb".
The tiny man bit the soldier's ear as the floor caved in and
the boiler in the basement blew.
While she's out on the balcony, where a stranger tells her,
"My darling, je vous aime beaucoup"
She sheds a tear and then begins to pray
As the fire burns on and
the smoke drifts away
From Black Delcath Bay.
I was sitting home alone one night in L.A. watching
old Cronkite on the
seven o'clock news.
It seems there was an earthquake that
Left nothing but a Panama hat
And a pair of old Greek shoes.
Didn't seem like much was happening so I turned it off
and went to grab another beer.
Seems like every time
you turn around
There's another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear.
And there's really nothing anyone can say....
Hell, I never did plan
to go anyway
To Black Delcath Bay.
(Black Diamond Bay, Bob Dylan)
AI
