[Verse 1]
Sometimes
Feel so low-down and disgusted
Can't help but wonder what's happening to my companions
Are they lost or are they found?
Have they counted the cost it'll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they're going to have to abandon?
[Chorus]
And there's a slow, slow train coming up around the bend
[Verse 2]
I had a woman
Down in Alabama
She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic
She said, "Boy, without a doubt
Have to quit your mess and straighten out
You could die down here, be just another accident statistic"
[Chorus]
And there's a slow, slow train coming up around the bend
[Verse 3]
All that foreign oil
Controlling American soil
Look around you, it's just bound to make you embarrassed
Sheiks walking around like kings
Wearing fancy jewels and nose rings
Deciding America's future from Amsterdam and Paris
[Chorus]
And there's a slow, slow train coming up around the bend
[Instrumental Break]
[Verse 4]
Man's ego is inflated
They don't apply no more, you can't rely no more to be standing around waiting
Jefferson turning over in his grave
Fools glorifying themselves, trying to manipulate Satan
[Chorus]
And there's a slow, slow train coming up around the bend
[Verse 5]
Big-time negotiators
False healers and woman-haters
Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition
All non-believers and men-stealers talking in the name of religion
[Chorus]
And there's a slow, there's a slow train coming up around the bend
[Verse 6]
People starving and thirsting
Grain elevators are bursting
Oh, you know it costs more to store the food than it do to give it
They say, "Lose your inhibitions
Follow your own ambitions"
They talk about a life of brotherly love; show me someone who knows how to live it
[Chorus]
There's a slow, slow train coming up around the bend
[Verse 7]
Well, my baby went to Illinois
With some bad-talking boy she could destroy
A real suicide case, but there was nothing I could do to stop it
I don't care about economy
I don't care about astronomy
But it sure does bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets
[Chorus]
And there's a slow, slow train coming up around the bend
(Up around the bend)
The “Slow Train” is a reference to the album name and cover art. If you take the album cover into account, it furthers the idea of this line: The train is coming up through the fundament of the people believing in the train (Of Christianity). The Pickaxe, which the front person uses has a longer handle than a normal one and thus looks like a cross, the religious symbol of christianity. The believers are building the foundation for the train of christianity. When it will be ready and there are enough believers, it will show itself thorugh “coming up around the bend”.
It also can be interpreted as the apocaplypse, symbolized through a train running everything over
Bob Dylan called this couplet “an intellectual line… that could be a lie” in an interview with SongTalk:
ST: “But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency…”
Dylan: Now don’t tell me… wait… Is that “When You Gonna Wake Up”?
ST: No, that’s from “Slow Train.”
Dylan: Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. Wow. There again. That’s a song that you could write a song to every line in the song. You could.
ST: Many of your songs are like that.
Dylan: Well, you know, that’s not good either. Not really. In the long run, it could have stood up better by maybe doing just that, maybe taking every line and making a song out of it. If somebody had the willpower. But that line, there again, is an intellectual line. It’s a line, “Well, the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency,” that could be a lie. It just could be. Whereas “Standing under your yellow railroad,” that’s not a lie. To Woody Guthrie, see, the airwaves were sacred. And when he’d hear something false, it was on airwaves that were sacred to him. His songs weren’t false. Now we know the airwaves aren’t sacred but to him they were.
Religion is often used as a way to justify certain events (crusades, persecution of “witches”). Dylan states that these people are nonbelievers and that this iss not the true nature of religion (or in this case mostly christianity)
Only god’s laws apply as mankind never can have an objective morality as god does