This year has seen the departure of yet another great poet, writer and musician: Mr Leonard Cohen (Québec, 1934 – San Francisco, 2016) was probably the most well known Canadian author still in active in his 80s. He had always declared himself a devout fan of Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, and many of Cohen’s songs are based on the works of Lorca. When Cohen had a daughter, he called her… Lorca Cohen.

One of his most famous versions of Lorca’s poetry is the song Take this Waltz. Let’s have a look at the official, very 80s-like video clip followed by the lyrics adapted by Cohen.

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
Aye, aye, aye, aye
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
Aye, aye, aye, aye
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?
Aye, aye, aye, aye
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
Aye, aye, aye, aye
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
Oh my love, oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It’s yours now, it’s all that there is