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 beer 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.

You don't know me from the wind -
you never will, you never did.
I'm the little Russian
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, 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.

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.

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.

Leonard Cohen
"The Future"
1992