The Future

Give me back my broken night, my mirrored room, my secret life. It's lonely here - there's no one left to torture. Give me absolute control over every living soul and lie beside me, baby, that's an order!

Give me crack and anal sex. Take the only tree that's left and stuff it up the hole in your culture. Give me back the Berlin wall. Give me Stalin and St Paul. I've seen the future, brother - it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions. It won't be nothing. Nothing you can measure anymore. The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul.

When they said "REPENT! REPENT!" I wonder what they meant?

You don't know me from the wind. You never will, you never did. I'm the little jew who wrote the Bible. I've seen the nations rise and fall. I've heard their stories - heard them all - but love's the only engine of survival.

Your servant here, he has been told to say it clear, to say it cold: It's over, it ain't going any further. And now the wheels of heaven stop you feel the devil's riding crop. Get ready for the future - it is murder! Things are going to slide.

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code. Your private life will suddenly explode. There'll be phantoms. There'll be fires on the road and the white man dancing. You'll see a woman hanging upside down, her features covered by her fallen gown. And all the lousy little poets coming round trying to sound like Charlie Manson and the white man dancing.

Give me back the Berlin wall. Give me Stalin and St Paul. Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima. Destroy another fetus now! We don't like children anyhow. I've seen the future, baby and it is murder.

Things are going to slide when they said "REPENT! REPENT!

Leonard Cohen