When I was young I watched the cars
When I was older I drank in bars
When I was young I chewed the leaves
When I was older I drank with thieves

I found a love she gave me dreams
She left me drunk in New Orleans
So cold and lonely, so all alone
I wished my heart was made of stone

I took the cold bright needle
I used it as a sword
My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
I burned across the delta
I swam across the ford
My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

When I was a young man standing on this road
My empty belly, an aching hole
An old man said to me "Kid don't you know
That it's the same wherever you go?"

I gambled in two graveyards I won against the odds
With the saints and the silent saviours, with the maggots and the gods
I cursed the things they showed me, I could never see again
And the howling of the wind at night I wrote upon the rain

I found the thing for which I prayed
And came back home to the USA
With a heart of stone, somehow I know
That it's the same wherever you go
Wherever you go
Wherever you go