Stories Of The Street
Composer(s): Leonard Cohen
First release by: Leonard Cohen - 1967
Covered by: That Petrol Emotion - 1991



The stories of the street are mine, the Spanish voices laugh
The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas
and I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose
yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose

I know you've heard it's over now and war must surely come
the cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone
But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk
All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us?

And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?
Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me?
O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel
You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal

The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask
the nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass
And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite
and one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night

O come with me my little one, we will find that farm
and grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm
And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am
O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb

With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl
I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world
We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky
and lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye