Leonard Cohen – Song To My Assassin lyrics

(Written By Cohen, Performed In "Night Magic")

(Frank & Louis) Are you still here? What are you waiting for?
Your lives to change? An oracle to speak?
Some version of the wounded matador
Who turns toward the bull his other cheek
And entertains you with a torn physique?
Some prisoner in pyjamas dancing lewd
Trablinka waltzes, while another freak
Hangs himself to concentrate your mood
And sweeten up your putrid solitude?

(Michael) My drummer is the only one I trust
Let the drums go rolling through the night
And let them pulverise my deep disgust
With steady thunder, whips and dynamite
The man of sticks and skins is always right.
I found him near the cremetorium
Humiliated, begging for a fight.
I wrote the name of honour on a drum
O drummer tell the people why I've come!

O listen to him and his saxophone

(Frank & Louis) Our musical genital unicorn

(Michael) He's very well hung with his golden horn
He'd like to be standing out here alone
The light on his hands, his mouth, and his bone.

(Frank & Louis) So take your solo now and loose your way
In every fingered hole and brassy groan...
You'll soon begin to choke on what you play

(Michael) You're choking now exactly as I say!

(Michael, Frank As for the deeper spirits in the hall
& Louis) Annointed ones and truely different
Whom orgy doesn't satisfy at all
Who loathe the horizontal argument

(Frank & Louis) It is to such as you that he was sent.

(Michael) I understand the loyalties that insist
You burn a child or shoot a president
Or tattoo numbers on a woman's wrist
I know the sorrow of the good idealist.

It is to such as you that I was sent
To speak directly to your deepest shame
And light the fires of experiment
And burn all hesitation in the flame --
I claim you now, I claim you in the name
Of that which you have never done before
And having done it never be the same.
The victim shall be smitten on his sore.
The haughty one shall have a visitor.

(Michael, Frank We heard that drummer, do not think we missed
& Louis) Your subtle derivation from the beat

(Michael) Which I established with an iron fist
A thousand years ago, a small deceit
To be enlarged until you have complete
Control of the mood and the atmosphere --
Your crooked time endangering my defeat --
Now all your instruments must disappear
And on your traitor's face pursue your
dark career!