Crickets are chirpin', the water is high,
There's a soft cotton dress on the line hangin' dry,
Windows wide open, African trees
Bent over backwards from a hurricane breeze.
Not a word of goodbye, note even a note,
She gone with the man
In the long black coat.
Somebody seen him hanging around
At the old dance hall on the outskirts of town,
He looked into her eyes when she stopped to ask
If he wanted to dance, he had a face like a mask.
Somebody said from the Bible he'd quote
There was dust on the man
In the long black coat.
Preacher was a talkin' there's a sermon he gave,
He said every man's conscience is vile and depraved,
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When it's you who must keep it satisfied.
It ain't easy to swallow, it sticks in the throat,
She gave her heart to the man
In the long black coat.
There are no mistakes in life some people say
It is true sometimes you can see it that way.
People don't live or die, people just float.
She went with the man
In the long black coat.
There's smoke on the water, it's been there since June,
Tree trunks uprooted, 'neath the high crescent moon
Feel the pulse and vibration and the rumbling force
Somebody is out there beating on a dead horse.
She never said nothing there was nothing she wrote,
She gone with the man
In the long black coat.
"Man In The Long Black Coat," from 1989's Oh Mercy, hailed as a comeback album at the time. If you listen closely to the live version available here, you can make out that Dylan sings "now the beach is deserted" in place of "there's smoke on the water" in the final verse - the new words coming directly from "Sara," a plea to his wife from the 1976 album Desire and a song which he hadn't sung in concert since that year.
