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Death of a Ladies' Man Lyrics

Ah the man she wanted all her life was hanging by a thread
"I never even knew how much I wanted you," she said.
His muscles they were numbered and his style was obsolete.
"O baby, I have come too late." She knelt beside his feet.
"I'll never see a face like yours in years of men to come
I'll never see such arms again in wrestling or in love."
And all his virtues burning in the smoky Holocaust
She took unto herself most everything her lover lost
Now the master of this landscape he was standing at the view
with a sparrow of St. Francis that he was preaching to
She beckoned to the sentry of his high religious mood
She said, "I'll make a place between my legs,
I'll show you solitude."

He offered her an orgy in a many mirrored room
He promised her protection for the issue of her womb
She moved her body hard against a sharpened metal spoon
She stopped the bloody rituals of passage to the moon

She took his much admired oriental frame of mind
and the heart-of-darkness alibi his money hides behind
She took his blonde madonna and his monastery wine --
"This mental space is occupied and everything is mine."

He tried to make a final stand beside the railway track
She said, "The art of longing's over and it's never coming back."
She took his tavern parliament, his cap, his cocky dance,
she mocked his female fashions and his working-class moustache.

The last time that I saw him he was trying hard to get
a woman's education but he's not a woman yet
And the last time that I saw her she was living with some boy
who gives her soul an empty room and gives her body joy.

So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed
it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed
It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.
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4 Meanings

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Cover art for Death of a Ladies' Man lyrics by Leonard Cohen

So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.

Some of the most amazing lines ever.

Cover art for Death of a Ladies' Man lyrics by Leonard Cohen

She said, "I'll make a space between my legs, I'll show you solitude." Best line ever written, period.

Cover art for Death of a Ladies' Man lyrics by Leonard Cohen

Just an impression, but I think its about a person who finds religion, is unfulfilled by it because she expects too much, then leaves it behind, living solitary with the young boy atheism because she feels spurned since her faith was immediately rewarded.

or, it could mean exactly what it says: Love comes, love leaves.

My Interpretation
Cover art for Death of a Ladies' Man lyrics by Leonard Cohen

This song strikes me as being about a woman who learns her partner is actually a transsexual. He 'comes out' after getting her pregnant, and leaves her, and she goes to a priest. Despite the priests offer to look after her and the baby (the issue of her worm) gets an "unofficial" abortion (the hardened metal spoon) but still stays with the priest. The transsexual confronts her about the abortion, and she taunts the man (saying she's severed the last link between them), and mocks his "female fashions and working class moustache" (literally: He wants to be a woman, but he's biologically a man).

The man starts a sex change (woman's education), whilst the women stays with the priest who she doesn't love but at least he provides for her (he's just some boy, giving her soul an empty room, and her body joy).