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You've seen your bright visions of glory
Where love built your city on high,
I have just seen your cold, lower dungeons
Where the victims of syph roll and cry.
They are called to this city of sorrow
To confess all the wrong things they've done,
Their teardrops and weeping runs louder
Than my city blown down by the bombs.
There's a street named for every disease here,
Syph Alley and Clap Avenue,
And the whores and their pimps and their victims
Crawl past on the curbs in my view.
Once young and once healthy and happy,
Now a whirlpool of raving insane,
Lost here in this wild V.D. City
Where nobody knows you by name.
Your eye is too tested to see here,
Worse than lepers your skin runs with sores,
Every window stands full of lost faces,
Human wrecks pile the steps and the doors.
Must you pay your way to this city
With an hour of passion's desire,
I pray that I'll not see your face here
Where the millions now burn in the fires.