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García Lorca’s Little Viennese Waltz

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En Viena hay diez muchachas,
un hombro donde solloza la muerte
y un bosque de palomas disecadas.
Hay un fragmento de la mañana
en el museo de la escarcha.
Hay un salón con mil ventanas.

¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals con la boca cerrada.

Este vals, este vals, este vals, este vals,
de sí, de muerte y de coñac
que moja su cola en el mar.
Te quiero, te quiero, te quiero,
con la butaca y el libro muerto,
por el melancólico pasillo,
en el oscuro desván del lirio,
en nuestra cama de la luna
y en la danza que sueña la tortuga.

¡Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Toma este vals de quebrada cintura.

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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 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

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Federico García Lorca, Pequeño Vals Vienés from Huída de Nueva York (1929)(L. Cohen transl.)

Leonard Cohen sings his translation of Pequeño vals Vienés, called Take This Waltz:

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