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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Lyrics for Song: The Carny
 Lyrics for Album: Your Funeral, My Trail [1986]
 
 
 
 14824>And no-one saw the Carny go
 
 And the weeks flew by
 
 Until they moved on the show
 
 Leaving his caravan behind
 
 It was parked out on the south east ridge
 
 And as the company crossed the bridge
 
 With the first rain filling the bone-dry river bed
 
 It shone, just so, upon the edge
 
 away, away we're sad to say
 
 
 
 Dog-boy, Atlas, Man-drake, the geeks, the hired hands
 
 There was not one among them that did not cast an eye behind
 
 In the hope that the Carny would return to his own kind
 
 
 
 The Carny left behind a horse so skin and bone that he'd named Sorrow
 
 And it was a shallow unmarked grave
 
 That that old nag was laid
 
 In the then parched meadow
 
 
 
 And it was the dwarves that were given the task of digging the ditch
 
 And laying the nag's carcass in the ground
 
 while boss Bellini, waved his smoking pistol 'round
 
 Saying ''The nag was dead meat''
 
 ''We can't afford to carry dead weight''
 
 The whole company standing about
 
 Not making a sound
 
 And turning to the dwarves on the enclosured gate
 
 the boss says ''bury this lump of crow bait''
 
 
 
 And the rain came hammering down
 
 Everybody running for their wagons
 
 Tying all the canvas flaps down
 
 The mangy cats growling in their cages
 
 The bird-girl flapping and squawkening around
 
 The whole valley reeking of wet beast
 
 Wet beast and rotten, sodden hay
 
 Freak and brute creation all packed up and on their way
 
 
 
 The three dwarves peering through their wagon's hind
 
 Moses says to Noah ''We shoulda dugga deepa one''
 
 Their grissom faces like dying moons
 
 Still dirty from the digging done
 
 
 
 And Charlie the Atlas to the three said
 
 "I guess the Carny ain't gonna show"
 
 And they were silent for a spell
 
 wishing they'd done a better job at burrying Sorrow
 
 
 
 And the company'd passed from the valley into higher ground
 
 The rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow and on the mound
 
 Until nothing was left, nothing left at all
 
 Except the body of Sorrow that rose in time
 
 To float upon the surface of the eaten soil
 
 
 
 And a murder of crows did circle 'round
 
 First one, then the others flapping blackly down
 
 
 
 And the Carny's van still sat upon the edge
 
 Tilting slowly as the firm ground turned to sludge
 
 
 
 And the rain it hammered down
 
 And the rain it hammered down
 
 And the rain it hammered down
 
 And the rain it hammered down
 
 
 
 And no-one saw the Carny go
 
 And no-one saw the Carny go
 
 And no-one saw the Carny go
 
 I say its funny how things go
 
 14824>
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