Pequeno Vals Vienes (Federico Garcia Lorca)

"Pequeno Vals Vienes" is the poem on which Leonard Cohen based the song "Take This Waltz." I have long wanted to do my own translation of the piece. So I have. It's below. The original, Spanish text can be found here.

update: I've done another version and posted it in the comments.

Little Viennese Waltz

In Vienna there are ten girls waiting
for death to sob on their shoulders;
there's a forest where the doves fall
to pieces every morning,
and their feathers are five thousand windows
in a gallery in the museum of frost.

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Take this waltz with its lips pressed together,
Take this waltz with the coin in its mouth.

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz
with its flavours of cognac and death,
and the sea splashing salt on its tail.

I need you, I want you, I'll love you
in the armchair with the book of the dead,
in corridors with their shadows of sadness
and the irises’ scent in the dark,
in our bed as pale as the moonlight
where we dance to rhythms we invented
with the shells of ourselves for drums.

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Take this waltz with its lips pressed together,
Take this waltz with the coin in its mouth.

In Vienna there are four broken mirrors
where the echoes of your mouth still play,
there's a piano whose keys are all dying
and boys wishing to wear something blue.
And the poor people tie freshly-wept garlands
to the tiles of their roofs every day.

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Take this waltz with its lips pressed together,
Take this waltz with the coin in its mouth.

Oh I love you, I want you, I need you,
in an attic where young people play
speedy Hungarian polkas
on quiet July afternoons
and sing of the lamb-white snow iris
(its petals open so slowly,
like your silent face in the dark).

Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Take this waltz with its lips pressed together,
Take this waltz with the coin in its mouth.

We'll dance it together in Vienna,
this waltz disguised as a river.
But there'll be a ocean of hyacinths around us,
their petals and my mouth on your legs.
Keep my soul in photographs and lilies,
and in the dark undulations of your thighs.

And I want, my love, to leave you
this violin with the dark in its hollow,
this violin with the tomb built in,
this violin and the tape of this waltz.