Take This Waltz / [band introductions] Songtext
von Leonard Cohen

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

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
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 it, 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