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

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 lilly,
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
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 lillies 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
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
O my love, o my love
Take this waltz,
take this waltz
It’s yours now.
It’s all that there is

This waltz, this waltz,
this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath
of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea

(This waltz, this waltz…..in the sea)