Leonard Cohen

Dance Me to the End of Love

Dance Me to the End of Love - context Summary

Written with Holocaust Memory

Published in 1984’s Various Positions, Leonard Cohen’s "Dance Me to the End of Love" pairs a conventional love-song voice with an explicit reference to the Holocaust. Its recurring refrain and spare stanzas set intimate images—music, wedding, children—against a background of historical violence. The poem asks how tenderness, art and human connection can function as refuge, witness and dignity amid atrocity. Knowing the Holocaust framing changes reading from a simple romance to a quiet meditation on endurance: love as both consolation and moral testimony in terrible circumstances.

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Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin, dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in, lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove, dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love. Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone, let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon, show me slowly what I only know the limits of, dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love. Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on, dance me very tenderly and dance me very long, we're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above, dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love. Dance me to the children who are asking to be born, dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn, raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn, dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love. Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin, dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in, touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove, dance me to the end of love, dance me to the end of love.