Dignity

Another gem from Bob Dylan's Tell Tale Signs:

Fat man looking in a shining steel
Thin man looking at his last meal
Hollow man looking in a cotton field
For dignity

Wise man looking at a blade of grass
Young man looking in the shadows that pass
Poor man looking through painted glass
For dignity

Somebody got murdered on new year's eve
Somebody said dignity was the last to leave
Went into the cities, went into the towns
In the land of the midnight sun

Searching high, searching low
Searching everywhere I know
Asking the cops wherever I go,
"Have you seen dignity?"

Blind man breaking out of a trance
Puts both his hands into the pockets of chance
Hoping to find the one circumstance
Of dignity

Stranger stares down into the light
From a platinum window in the Mexican night
Searching every blood-sucking thing in sight
For dignity

I went down where the vultures feed
Would have gone deeper, but there wasn't any need
Heard the tongues of the angels and the tongues of men
It all sounded no different to me

Soul of a nation is under the knife
Death is standing in the doorway of life
In the next room, a man fighting with his wife
Over dignity

This alternate version speaks more to me than its two companions. It sets down the foundation of many major issues, placing as book-ends two powerfully linked verses. All of the yearning and hopelessness of the middle verses pale in comparison to the last four lines, yet each situation describes people searching for that quintessential thing which they lack. These are the fatherless, the widow, the sojourner; these we dare not neglect.

Death is standing in the doorway of life.