Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry.
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows.
There's a tree where the doves go to die.
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
and it hangs in the Gallery of Frost --
Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws.
I want you, I want you, I want you
on a chair with a dead magazine.
In the cave at the tip of the lily,
in some hallway where love's never been.
On a bed where the moon has been sweating,
in a cry filled with footsteps and sand --
Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take its broken waist in your hand.
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
with its very own breath
of brandy and death,
dragging its tail in the sea.
There's a concert hall in Vienna
where your mouth had a thousand reviews.
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking,
they've been sentenced to death by the blues.
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
with a garland of freshly cut tears?
Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz, it's been dying for years.
There's an attic where children are playing,
where I've got to lie down with you soon,
in a dream of Hungarian lanterns,
in the mist of some sweet afternoon.
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow,
all your sheep and your lilies of snow --
Ay, ay, ay, ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
with its "I'll never forget you, you know!"
And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there, and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross.
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
to the pools that you lift on your wrist --
O my love, O my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
it's yours now. It's all that there is.
Copyright © Leonard Cohen
and Sony/ATV Music Publishing Canada Company
Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved. |