Don McLean Follow

Was walking by the graveyard, late last Friday night
I heard somebody yelling, it sounded like a fight
It was just a drunken hobo dancing circles in the night
Pouring whiskey on the headstones in the blue moonlight

So often have I wondered where these homeless brothers go
Down in some hidden valley where their sorrows cannot show
Where the police cannot find them, where the wanted men can go
There's freedom when you're walking, even though you're walking slow

Smash your bottle on a gravestone and live while you can
That homeless brother is my friend

It's hard to be a pack rat, it's hard to be a 'bo
But living's so much harder where the heartless people go
Somewhere the dogs are barking and the children seem to know
That Jesus on the highway was a lost hobo

And they hear the holy silence of the temples in the hill
And they see the ragged tatters as another kind of thrill
And they envy him, the sunshine and they pity him, the chill
And they're sad to do their living for some other kind of thrill

Smash your bottle on a gravestone and live while you can
That homeless brother is my friend

Somewhere there was a woman, somewhere there was a child
Somewhere there was a cottage where the marigolds grew wild

You'll find the broken hearted when you're traveling jungle style

Down the bowels of a broken land where numbers live like men
Where those who keep their senses have them taken back again
Where the night stick cracks with crazy rage
Where madmen don't pretend
Where wealth has no beginning and poverty no end

Smash your bottle on a gravestone and live while you can
That homeless brother is my friend

The ghosts of highway royalty have vanished in the night
The Whitman wanderer walking toward a glowing inner light
The children have grown older and the cops have gripped us tight
There's no spot round the melting pot for free men in their flight

And you who live on promises and prosper as you please
Well, the victim of our riches often dies of our disease
He can't hear the factory whistle
Just the lonesome freight trains wheeze
He's living on good fortune, he ain't dying on his knees

Smash your bottle on a gravestone and live while you can
That homeless brother is my friend
That homeless brother is my friend

Was walking by the graveyard, late last Friday night
I heard somebody yelling, it sounded like a fight
It was just a drunken hobo dancing circles in the night