“A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” is a very emotional song, filled with obvious symbolism. I like the song very much, but almost the entire song is “in code”. I can decypher the obvious ones like, “white man walking a black dog and so on” Can anyone translate this song for me?
What? An obscure, esoteric, and practically indecipherable Dylan lyric? I’ve never heard of any such thing.
beware! Some of the lyrics in Dylan songs are added because they “sound nice” and flow with the rest of the lyrics. Not every cigar has a symbolic meaning (see Maggie’s Farm)
Individual lines are hard to decipher, but the meaning of the song as a whole is pretty clear: Dylan is looking around at America, seeing war, pain and injustice, and he’s prophesying that America will soon face a violent reckoning for its sins.
However, the one line the OP mentions seems pretty easy to read: one of the injustices Dylan was referring to was racism. The white man walking the black dog referred to black Americans’ subjugation and oppression by whites.
The inner city riots of the 60s, triggered by black anger, were certainly a huge part of the “hard rain” Dylan saw coming.