10 Greatest Leonard Cohen Lyrics (Part 3)

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4) "I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song"- The Tower Of Song

Hank Williams died in 1953 in the back seat of a car at the age of 29. And Leonard says that he's still suffering, he'll never be at rest, like Hendrix is still choking and the King's still on that bathroom floor. Here's the secret of their success, they carry it forever, the heavy door that it unlocks is not to heaven but the tower of song. Yeats came down himself and wrote the cost by saying that it's "only an aching heart concieves a changeless work of art". And look close above the doorway, though faded, the words are still where Dante writ them. In Itallian, but for always, "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"



5) I told my mother "Mother I must leave you
preserve my room but do not shed a tear
And should rumour of a shabby ending reach you
it was half my fault and half the atmosphere"- The Traitor

James Dean yells this out to his mom as he goes, and you can blame him for the driving but not the other cars on the road. And whether he was speeding or not sometimes driving fast's the only way to get to where you're going. His last words before the crash were reported to have been "That guy's gotta stop... He'll see us." And Leonard heard him like a poet, and the only thing he added were what his next words would have been. In another world where the crash happened just a couple seconds later, he got a chance to say, and Leonard heard him, "I'm sorry ma, I tried".



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