Leonard Cohen & Lorca

 At a concert in Nuremberg in October, 1988, Leonard Cohen
introduced a song that was born in a Montreal bookstore when Cohen was 15 years old:

It was about 300 years ago today that I stumbled on a book by a Spanish poet. A book that was to alter my life completely. You see I was destined to be a brain surgeon or a forest ranger or even just to go into the family clothing business. But in this old bookstore I opened a book and I read the lines “I want to pass through the arches of Elvira, to see your thighs and begin weeping.” I turned to the cover of the book, it was written by a Spanish poet by the name of Frederico Garcia Lorca, and for the first time I understood that there was another world and I wanted to be in it. So it was a great honour for me when I was asked to translate one of his great poems into English and to set it to music. The poem is Little Viennese Waltz which I called Take This Waltz.”

Leonard Cohen named his daughter Lorca.

These are the lyrics to his song:

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 hallways 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 moves 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 its “I’ll never forget you, you know!”

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz …

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.