Tower of Song

Leonard Cohen

 

Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey,

I ache in the places where I used to play

And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on.

I'm just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song

I said to Hank Williams "How lonely does it get?"

Hank Williams . . . hasn't answered yet,

But I hear him coughing all night long,

A hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song.

I was born like this, I had no choice.

I was born with the gift of a golden voice,

And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond.

They tied me to this table right here in the Tower of Song.

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll;

I'm very sorry, baby, doesn't look like me at all.

I'm standing by the window where the light is strong.

Ah they don't let a woman kill you, not in the Tower of Song.

Now you can say that I've grown bitter

but of this you may be sure:

The rich have got their channels in

the bedrooms of the poor.

And there's a mighty judgement coming,

But I may be wrong;

You see, I hear these funny voices

In the Tower of Song.

I see you standing on the other side,

I don't know how the river got so wide.

I loved you baby, way back when;

And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed,

But I feel so close to everything that we lost,

We'll never have to lose it again.

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back;

They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track,

But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone.

I'll be speaking to you sweetly, from a window in the Tower of Song.

Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey,

I ache in the places where I used to play,

And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on.

I'm just paying my rent every day in the Tower of Song.