Take This Waltz

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 theGallery of Frost

 

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey

Take this waltz, take this waltz

Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

 

Oh 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

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey

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

But who is it climbs to your picture

With a garland of freshly cut tears?

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey

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

 

Aey, aey, aey, aey

Take this waltz, take this waltz

With its, I'll never forget you, you know

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz

With its very own breath of brandy and death

Dragging its tail in the sea

 

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

Oh my love, oh my love

Take this waltz, take this waltz

It's yours now, it's all that there is

Aey, aey, aey, aey

 ― Leonard Cohen, Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs