Martha Wainwright - The Traitor (Leonard Cohen cover)

Love this . . . . so moving . . . . 

sign off the day with some Martha

We haven’t had any Martha Wainwright for way too long and this will have to make up . . . . . . . her first solo album [+BMFA!] etc blew me right away! 

Awesome peerless woman

Now the swan it floated on the English river
Ah, the rose of high romance, it opened wide
A sun tanned woman yearned me through the summer
And the judges watched us from the other side

I told my mother, "Mother, I must leave you
Preserve my room but do not shed a tear
Should rumor of a shabby ending reach you
It was half my fault and half the atmosphere"

But the rose I sickened with a scarlet fever
And the swan I tempted with a sense of shame
She said at last I was her finest lover
And if she withered I would be to blame

The judges said, "You missed it by a fraction
Rise up and brace your troops for the attack"
Ah, the dreamers ride against the men of action
Oh, see the men of action falling back

But I lingered on her thighs, a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still
My falsity had stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralyzed my will

I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers

That they had been deserted from above

So on battlefields from here to Barcelona

I'm listed with the enemies of love

And long ago she said, "I must be leaving

Ah, but keep my body here to lie upon

You can move it up and down and when I'm sleeping

Run some wire through that rose and wind the swan"

So daily I renew my idle duty

I touch her here and there, I know my place

I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty

And people call me traitor to my face 

L. Cohen