In Vienna there's ten pretty women - Federico Garcia Lorca

[Jerry]

Leonard Cohen's TAKE THIS WALTZ is a beautiful melody adapted from Lorca's poem. My European (Lithuanian) wife and I --- it was OUR song (sob, sniffle - O Neringa!!!!) :

 

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 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!"

 

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

[Evil Sid]

 

 

 

[Geoffrey Settle]

Jerry I'm just reading a book about Joni Mitchell and her Blue phase. I didn't realise that like her he is Canadian and a great song writer.

[Jerry]

La la la --- la la la --- la la la ---- ahhhhh, so sentimental, so sweet, so obscure lyrics, translated from the Spanish.

 

I had heard Cohen's DEMOCRACY IS COMING TO THE USA, years before I met Neringa, so when I did meet her and she praised Cohen it was "Ah HA!!! A soul mate!!!"

 

His orchestrations are so different -- maybe just one piano note repeated or like WALTZ where a lone trumpet picks up the melody and rides it off into the sunset.

 

Since Lorca was gay, I wonder if he was insulting Viennese ladies, suggesting there's only ten pretty ones???

 

It was just a week ago that I discovered that cache of songs on You Tube. I used to tell people WAITING FOR THE MIRACLE was the story of my life. Of course I told Neringa: I'M YOUR MAN.

 

I think Canadian artists are lucky because they don't get drowned out early in their careers by offal dreck that the corporate music idiots stoned on cocaine and worse insist that we listen to on American media.