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
Won’t be nothing / Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, 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
When they said REPENT REPENT / I wonder what they meant
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 / tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson / and the white man dancin’

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: it is murder

“The Future”, Leonard Cohen