Take This Waltz - a song by Leonard Cohen

Taken from the album "I'm Your Man" (1988), this is a setting of Federico Garcia Lorca's beautiful poem "Little Viennese Waltz".

Here are Cohen's lyrics:

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' 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 hallways where loves 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 its been dying for years

There' 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 Ill 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 Ill never forget you, you know!

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz ...

And Ill dance with you in Vienna
Ill be wearing a rivers disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And Ill bury my soul in a scrapbook,
With the photographs there, and the moss
And Ill 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
Its yours now. its all that there is.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• vienna
• take
• waltz
• leonard
• cohen
• ukulele
• uke
• ukelele
• ken
• middleton

[jonetherland]

thank you for this version!

[KenMiddletonUkulele]

@jonetherland Thanks for watching.

[600dominator]

I didnt think any one on this planet could sing this  song and give it the same feeling as Cohen.

It is an awesome "SWEET" interpretation..

[KenMiddletonUkulele]

@600dominator I agree, only Cohen can sing it really well.

[darby123able]

from another senior --- this is great !!!

[KenMiddletonUkulele]

Thanks.

[PazContigo]

wonderful & inspired version, ken!

i would be honoured if you listen to my interpretation of it.

[KenMiddletonUkulele]

Thank you.

[TheEigylyte]

very beautiful voice and song its better then leonard cohen

[KenMiddletonUkulele]

Thanks for your very positive comment.