Things Unseen

                             
                               

Take this Waltz

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

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

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?

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

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
O my love, o my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now. It's all that there is

--Leonard Cohen