Take This Waltz by Leonard Cohen

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—

Ay, ay ay ay

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 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 its "I'll never forget you, you know!"

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. 

Take This Waltz by Leonard Cohen Analysis

I'd heard an interpretation before of this song as being about a dead lover, the first verse taking place in a church, at her funeral (the "tree where the doves go to die" is a crucifix, and the "piece torn from the morning" is her body lying in a cold casket, on display in a "gallery of frost"). The interpreter gave the second verse as him stealing a moment alone, thinking how much he wants her with him again, right here, "in a chair with a dead magazine" in some reception or waiting room, or in one of the church's lonely hallways. As for "the cave at the tip of the lily," I see him looking at funeral flowers and thinking the hollow made by a lily's curved petal looks like a beautiful place to hide away with her. She might have been a singer (leaving her adoring fans "sentenced to death by the blues"), but that would be such a literal interpretation compared to the rest of the song. If all of the above is where you go with the song's meaning, I'm pretty sure that in the last verse, the singer drowns himself. He says he will dance with his (dead!) lover wearing a disguise, like at a masquerade ball--and he's going as a river. He'll "bury his soul" with "the moss", and "yield to the flood of your beauty." And to speak of laying down or giving up one's cross is sometimes used to mean giving up the world's difficulties and ugliness for the rest at the end of life.