Homeless Brother (Live/1976)

Homeless Brother (Live/1976) - Don McLean

I 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

Were their sorrows cannot show

Where the police cannot find them where the wanted men

Can go

There's freedom when your

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

But some where's just like nowhere when you leave it

For a while

You'll find the broken hearted when you're travelling 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 leave on promises

And prosper as you please

The victim of your riches often dies of your disease

He can't hear the factory whistle

Just the lonesome freight train's

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