Raised on words like "punishment" and "God will get you

If you don't do what you're told." 

Nuns turned children into fearful right 

handed little 

Servants of the Lord 



And then the atom bomb fell down on Hiroshima, North Dakota 

The year she turned sixteen 

And she said, "There is something very wrong here. 

Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? 



'Cause I got visions forming in my head 

And I keep hearing what the preacher said 

Said this world will be the death of me 

I know it will, it's bound to be 

Bound to be" 



Satchel full of broken hopes and empty picture postcards 

That she'd never send 

Her mama sitting on the front porch step 

Daddy frowning in the darkened doorway, waving his regret 

Then she was jumping on the Santa Fe, summer night in 1947 

Bound for God knew where 

And she said, "I can see destruction fast approaching. 

I feel it in the air. I feel it in the air. 



And I got visions forming in my head 

(See the blood on the horizon) 

And I keep hearing what the preacher said 

(Said the truth will set you free) 

Said this world will be the death of me 

(I got no one to rely on) 

I know it will, it's bound to be." 

(Except for me...) 



On a road in Valparaiso, she met a hobo named Old John 

They hunkered down in a gazebo, and chose a star to gaze upon 

Old John said he could see her slipping, and he asked her what was wrong 

She said, "The rope I had been gripping turned to sand 

And now it's gone, now it's gone. 



Can't you see the writing on the blood soaked blue horizon 

Plain as VJ day. Hear the barking of the 

Drowning dogs, frozen like so many Eisenhower 

Statues in Pompei. I think I'll take another taste 

Old John, to numb my heart, God knows I'm falling fast as 

Atoms through the sky." She said, 

"This world it sure ain't no place to live in 

But it ain't no place to die. No it ain't no place to die..."