Take This Waltz

Leonard Cohen

Now in Vienna there are 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 lilly,

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 lillies of snow

Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay

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