This Wheel’s on Fire

The words

An ominous warning that a reckoning is coming and cannot be escaped.

The speaker tells someone that he will return, and that when he does, the debts and promises between them will have to be settled. The images are mysterious and full of menace, building toward a refrain about a burning wheel rolling down the road that threatens to burst apart. Nothing is fully explained, which makes the warning feel all the more unavoidable. Dylan wrote the words and Rick Danko of the Band wrote the music.