Of the girl that I love,

As she lies here beside me

Asleep with the night,

And her hair, in a fine mist

Floats on my pillow,

Reflecting the glow

Of the winter moonlight.

She is soft, she is warm,

But my heart remains heavy,

And I watch as her breasts

Gently rise, gently fall,

For I know with the first light of dawn

I’ll be leaving,

And tonight will be

All I have left to recall.

Oh, what have I done,

Why have I done it,

I’ve committed a crime,

I’ve broken the law.

For twenty-five dollars

And pieces of silver,

I held up and robbed

A hard liquor store.

My life seems unreal,

My crime an illusion,

A scene badly written

In which I must play.

Yet I know as I gaze

At my young love beside me,

The morning is just a few hours away.

There are some sentences in the lyrics written in Present Perfect. Can you find them? Can you translate them into Hungarian? Can you transform the sentences into Past Simple?

Key

1. What have I done? – Mit tettem? – What did I do?

2. Why have I done it? – Miért tettem ezt? – Why did I do it?

3. I’ve committed a crime. – Bűntényt követtem el. – I committed a crime.

4. I’ve broken the law. – Áthágtam a törvényt. – I broke a law.

Kathy:

Good mornin’,

Cosmo:

Good mornin’!

Don:

We’ve talked the whole night through,

Kathy:

Good mornin’

Kathy, Don & Cosmo:

Good mornin’ to you.

Good mornin’, good mornin’!

It’s great to stay up late,

Good mornin’, good mornin’ to you.

Cosmo:

When the band began to play

The stars were shinin’ bright.

Don:

Now the milkman‘s on his way,

It’s too late to say goodnight.

Kathy, Don & Cosmo:

So, good mornin’, good mornin’!

Sunbeams will soon smile through,

Good mornin’, good mornin’, to you,

Kathy:

And you, and you, and you!

Good morning,

Good morning,

We’ve gabbed the whole night through.

Good morning, good morning to you.

Don & Cosmo:

Nothin’ could be grander than to be in Louisiana

Kathy, Don & Cosmo:

In the morning,

In the morning,

It’s great to stay up late!

Good mornin’,

Good mornin’ to you.

Don & Cosmo:

It might be just a zippy

If you was in Mississipi!

Kathy:

When we left the movie show

The future wasn’t bright

But came the dawn

The show goes on

And I don’t wanna say good night

Don & Cosmo:

So say, Good Mornin’!

Kathy:

Good Mornin’!

Kathy, Don & Cosmo:

Rainbow is shining through

Kathy:

Good Mornin’! 

Don & Cosmo:

Good Mornin’!

Kathy:

Bon Jour!

Don & Cosmo:

Bon Jour!

Kathy:

Buenos Dias!

Don & Cosmo:

Buenos Dias!

Kathy:

Buon Giorno!

Don & Cosmo:

Buon Giorno!

Kathy:

Guten Morgen!

Don & Cosmo:

Guten Morgen!

Kathy, Don & Cosmo:

Good morning to you.

Waka laka laka wa

Waka laka laka wa…

Ole, toro, Bravo!

Can you find the English equivalent of these Hungarian sentences in the lyrics?

1. Átbeszélgettük az egész éjszakát.

2. Nagyszerű dolog későig fönnmaradni.

3. Túl késő van jó éjszakát kívánni.

4. Fényesen világítottak a csillagok.

5. A show megy tovább.

Key

1. We’ve talked the whole night through.

2. It’s great to stay up late.

3. It’s too late to say good night.

4. The stars were shining bright.

5. The show goes on.

CRAIG DAVID: 7 DAYS

Verse 1:

On my way to see my friends
who lived a couple blocks away from me (owh)
As I walked through the subway
it must have been about quarter past three
In front of me
stood a beautiful honey with a beautiful body
She asked me for the time
I said it’d cost her name
a six digit number & a date with me tomorrow at nine.

Did she decline? No.
Didn’t she mind? I don’t think so.
Was it for real? Damn sure.
What was the deal? A pretty girl aged 24.
So was she keen? She couldn’t wait.
Cinnamon queen? Let me update.
What did she say? She said she’d love to
rendezvous.
She asked me what we were gonna do
said we’d start with a bottle of moet for two.

Chorus:

Monday
took her for a drink on Tuesday
we were making love by Wednesday
and on Thursday & Friday & Saturday we chilled on Sunday
I met this girl on Monday
took her for a drink on Tuesday
we were making love by Wednesday
and on Thursday & Friday & Saturday we chilled on Sunday

Verse 2:

Nine was the time
‘cos I’ll be getting mine
and she was looking fine
Smooth talker
she told me
She’d love to unfold me all night long
Ooh I loved the way she kicked it
from the front to back she flipped (back she flipped it, ooh the
way she
kicked it)
And I oh oh I yeah
hope that she’d care
‘cos I’m a man who’ll always be there

Ooh yeah
I’m not a man to play around baby
Ooh yeah
‘cos a one night stand isn’t really fair
From the first impression girl hmm you don’t seem to be like that
Cos there’s no need to chat for there’ll be plenty for that
From the subway to my home
endless ringing of my phone
When you feeling all alone
all you gotta do
is just call me call me

Chorus:

Monday
took her for a drink on Tuesday
we were making love by Wednesday
and on Thursday & Friday & Saturday we chilled on Sunday
I met this girl on Monday
took her for a drink on Tuesday
we were making love by Wednesday
and on Thursday & Friday & Saturday we chilled on Sunday

Bridge:

(Break it down, uh break it down)
Since I met this special lady
ooh yeah
I can’t get her of my mind
She’s one of a kind
And I ain’t about to deny it
It’s a special kinda thing
with you-oh…….

Chorus:

Monday
took her for a drink on Tuesday
we were making love by Wednesday
and on Thursday & Friday & Saturday we chilled on Sunday
I met this girl on Monday
took her for a drink on Tuesday
we were making love by Wednesday
and on Thursday & Friday & Saturday we chilled on Sunday

[x2]

Answer the questions about the song in English!

1) Where did his friends live?
…………………………………………………………………………
2) Where and when did he meet the girl?
…………………………………………………………………………
3) What did she ask him?
…………………………………………………………………………
4) What did he ask her in exchange?
…………………………………………………………………………
5) How old was the girl?
…………………………………………………………………………
6) What did they do on the first date?
…………………………………………………………………………
7) On which day did he take her for a drink?
…………………………………………………………………………

Answers:
1) His friends lived a couple blocks away from him.
2) He met the girl in the subway at about quarter past three.
3) She asked him for the time.
4) He asked her name and phone number and a date the next day at 9.
5) She was 24.
6) They went to have a drink.
7) He took her for a drink on Tuesday.

——————————————-

block – háztömb
subway – metro
six-digit number – 6 számjegyű szám
date – randevú
to decline – visszautasít
to mind (to do something) – bán valamit (csinálni)
to be keen (on something) – lelkes (valamit csinálni)
Moet – egy francia pezsgő neve (Moët & Chandon)
to unfold – feltár, kitárulkozik
to play around – játszadozik
one night stand – egy éjszakás kaland
first impression – első benyomás
endless – végtelen, végeláthatatlan
I can’t get her of my mind – Nem tudom kiverni a fejemből
to deny – tagad

Kíváncsi vagy, honnan ered a napok neve angolul? Olvasd ezt a cikket is ITT

But I just can’t stand the pain

Girl I’m leaving you tomorrow

Seems to me girl

You know I’ve done all I can

You see I begged, stole

And I borrowed

Ooh, that’s why I’m easy

I’m easy like Sunday morning

That’s why I’m easy

I’m easy like Sunday morning

Why in the world

Would anybody put chains on me?

I’ve paid my dues to make it

Everybody wants me to be

What they want me to be

I’m not happy when I try to fake it!

No!

Oh, that’s why I’m easy

I’m easy like Sunday morning

That’s why I’m easy

I’m easy like Sunday morning

I wanna be high, so high

I wanna be free to know

The things I do are right

I wanna be free

Just me, babe!

That’s why I’m easy

I’m easy like Sunday morning

That’s why I’m easy

I’m easy like Sunday morning

Because I’m easy

Easy like Sunday morning

Because I’m easy

Easy like Sunday morning

There are some nice expressions in the lyrics. Can you translate them into Hungarian?

1. I can’t stand the pain.

2. I’ve done all I can.

3. Why in the world?

4. I’ve paid my dues.

5. Everybody wants me to be what they want me to be.

6. I wanna be free.

Key

1. Nem tudom elviselni a fájdalmat.

2. Mindent megtettem, amit csak lehet/tudok.

3. Vajon miért? Mi a csudáért?

4. Megfizettem, ami jár.

5. Mindenki azt akarja, hogy olyan legyek, amilyennek ők akarnak látni engem.

6. Szabad akarok lenni.

A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.

And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily,

Joyfully, playfully watching me.

But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible,

Logical, responsible, practical.

And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,

Clinical, intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the world’s asleep,

The questions run too deep

For such a simple man.

Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned

I know it sounds absurd

But please tell me who I am.

Now watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical,

Liberal, fanatical, criminal.

Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re

Acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable!

At night, when all the world’s asleep,

The questions run so deep

For such a simple man.

Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned

I know it sounds absurd

But please tell me who I am.

Kigyűjtöttük a dalszövegből a mellékneveket. Alakítsd át őket határozóvá!

young
wonderful
beautiful
magical
sensible
responsible
logical
practical
dependable
clinical
intellectual
cynical
deep
simple
absurd
acceptable
respectable
presentable

Megoldás:

young – youngly
wonderful – wonderfully
beautiful – beautifully
magical – magically
sensible – sensibly
responsible – responsibly
logical – logically
practical – practically
dependable – dependably
clinical – clinically
intellectual – intellectually
cynical – cynically
deep – deeply
simple – simply
absurd – absurdly
acceptable – acceptably
respectable – respectably
presentable – presentably

Most pedig keresd meg a határozókat, és alakítsd át őket melléknévvé!

happily
joyfully
playfully

Megoldás:

happily – happy
joyfully – joyful
playfully – playful

The story of how an 18th-century Scottish ballad became synonymous with the new year is tangled, involving both Calvinist theology’s traditional aversion to Christmas and the uniquely central role that watching television plays in American New Year’s celebrations.

As immortalized in When Harry Met Sally, a casual listener to the song is likely to be confused as to what the central opening lyric means.

The answer is that “Should old acquaintance be forgot?” is a rhetorical question. The speaker is asking whether old friends should be forgotten, as a way of stating that obviously one should not forget one’s old friends. The version of the song we sing today is based on a poem published by Robert Burns, which he attributed to “an old man’s singing,” noting that it was a traditional Scottish song. Fundamentally similar songs and poems existed in other forms in 18th-century Scotland.

What is the meaning of “Auld Lang Syne?”

Scottish people speak English with a distinctive accent, and we may also be aware of the existence of a language called Scottish Gaelic that is related to Irish and Welsh and is rarely spoken. But there is also what is known as the Scots language, which has clear similarities to English without truly being intelligible to English speakers — in much the way that Italian and Spanish are similar, but distinct, languages.

The point is that the phrase “auld lang syne” is not recognizable to English speakers because it is not an English phrase. Translated literally it means “old long since,” but the meaning is more like “old times” or “the olden days.”

When Harry Met Sally is right: It’s about old friends

As Meg Ryan’s character Sally says in the movie, this is a song about old friends. Old friends who haven’t seen each other in a while are meeting up again, having a drink, and reminiscing. If this were a song that you normally listened to in a quiet room at full length in English when sober, there would be no confusion. Since that’s basically the opposite of a New Year’s Eve party, which is when you usually hear the song, there is a lot of confusion. But the song itself is not especially complicated.

New Year’s is a big deal in Scotland

One reason a random Scottish folk song has come to be synonymous with the new year is that New Year’s celebrations (known as Hogmanay) loom unusually large in Scottish folk culture — so much so that Scotland’s official website has a whole Hogmanay section, which notes that, “Historically, Christmas was not observed as a festival and Hogmanay was the more traditional celebration in Scotland.”

Everyone likes a good party, and the end of one year and the beginning of the next seems like as good a thing to celebrate as anything else, so Scottish-inflected New Year’s celebrations — including the sentimental and appealingly nonspecific “Auld Lang Syne” — came naturally to the English-speaking world.

Canadian band leader Guy Lombardo made “Auld Lang Syne” an institution

From 1929 until 1976, first on radio and then on television, Americans tuned in to the New Year’s Eve broadcast by Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians, a big band act led by Lombardo, a Canadian whose parents immigrated from Italy. For decades, Lombardo owned December 31 — even earning the nickname “Mr. New Year’s Eve” — and every single year he played “Auld Lang Syne” to ring in the new year.

Then because of the influence of American movies and television shows on pop culture all around the world, conventional depictions of people ringing in the new year to “Auld Lang Syne” were beamed into living rooms globally. An 18th-century Scottish ballad thus became a midcentury American television ritual, and from there became a worldwide phenomenon — even though almost nobody understands the song.

source: www.vox.com

The lyrics of the song (Mariah Carey version):

“Auld Lang Syne (The New Year’s Anthem)”

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne.

We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,

For auld lang syne.

Eh…

Happy New Year, baby

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

Happy New Year, baby

Happy New Year, baby

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne!

In Hungarian we usually sing the following version:

„Jut még eszedbe, kedvesem,

A boldog ifjúság,

 Az erdőszéli kis patak,

S a régi jó barát.

Ó gondolj, gondolj néha rám,

A sors bármerre hajt,

Emlékül küldöm, kedvesem

A régi-régi dalt.”

“It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away,” the statement read. “We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries. A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date. The family requests privacy during their time of grief.” A cause of death and exact date of death was not given.

“Unmatched in his creativity, insight and crippling candor, Leonard Cohen was a true visionary whose voice will be sorely missed,” his manager Robert Kory wrote in a statement. “I was blessed to call him a friend, and for me to serve that bold artistic spirit firsthand, was a privilege and great gift. He leaves behind a legacy of work that will bring insight, inspiration and healing for generations to come.”

Cohen’s haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns shaped evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression. He was also the rare artist of his generation to enjoy artistic success into his Eighties, releasing his final album, You Want It Darker, earlier this year.

“I never had the sense that there was an end,” he said in 1992. “That there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot.”

Leonard Norman Cohen was born on September 21st, 1934, in Westmount, Quebec. He learned guitar as a teenager and formed a folk group called the Buckskin Boys. Early exposure to Spanish writer Federico Garcia Lorca turned him toward poetry – while a flamenco guitar teacher convinced him to trade steel strings for nylon.

When he was twenty-five, he was living in London, sitting in cold rooms writing sad poems. He got by on a three-thousand-dollar grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. This was 1960, long before he played the festival at the Isle of Wight in front of six hundred thousand people. Cohen, whose family was both prominent and cultivated, had an ironical view of himself. He was a bohemian with a cushion whose first purchases in London were an Olivetti typewriter and a blue raincoat at Burberry. Even before he had much of an audience, he had a distinct idea of the audience he wanted. In a letter to his publisher, he said that he was out to reach “inner-directed adolescents, lovers in all degrees of anguish, disappointed Platonists, pornography-peepers, hair-handed monks and Popists.”

Cohen was growing weary of London’s rising damp and its gray skies. An English dentist had just yanked one of his wisdom teeth. After weeks of cold and rain, he wandered into a bank and asked the teller about his deep suntan. The teller said that he had just returned from a trip to Greece. Cohen bought an airline ticket.

Not long afterward, he alighted in Athens, visited the Acropolis, made his way to the port of Piraeus, boarded a ferry, and disembarked at the island of Hydra. With the chill barely out of his bones, Cohen took in the horseshoe-shaped harbor and the people drinking cold glasses of retsina and eating grilled fish in the cafés by the water; he looked up at the pines and the cypress trees and the whitewashed houses that crept up the hillsides. There was something mythical and primitive about Hydra. Cars were forbidden. Mules humped water up the long stairways to the houses. There was only intermittent electricity. Cohen rented a place for fourteen dollars a month. Eventually, he bought a whitewashed house of his own, for fifteen hundred dollars, thanks to an inheritance from his grandmother.

Hydra promised the life Cohen had craved: spare rooms, the empty page, eros after dark. He collected a few paraffin lamps and some used furniture: a Russian wrought–iron bed, a writing table, chairs like “the chairs that van Gogh painted.” During the day, he worked on a sexy, phantasmagoric novel called “The Favorite Game” and the poems in a collection titled “Flowers for Hitler.” He alternated between extreme discipline and the varieties of abandon. There were days of fasting to concentrate the mind. There were drugs to expand it: pot, speed, acid. “I took trip after trip, sitting on my terrace in Greece, waiting to see God,” he said years later. “Generally, I ended up with a bad hangover.”

Here and there, Cohen caught glimpses of a beautiful Norwegian woman. Her name was Marianne Ihlen, and she had grown up in the countryside near Oslo. Her grandmother used to tell her, “You are going to meet a man who speaks with a tongue of gold.” She thought she already had: Axel Jensen, a novelist from home, who wrote in the tradition of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. She had married Jensen, and they had a son, little Axel. Jensen was not a constant husband, however, and, by the time their child was four months old, Jensen was, as Marianne put it, “over the hills again” with another woman.

One spring day, Ihlen was with her infant son in a grocery store and café. “I was standing in the shop with my basket waiting to pick up bottled water and milk,” she recalled decades later, on a Norwegian radio program. “He is standing in the doorway with the sun behind him.” Cohen asked her to join him and his friends outside. He was wearing khaki pants, sneakers, a shirt with rolled sleeves, and a cap. The way Marianne remembered it, he seemed to radiate “enormous compassion for me and my child.” She was taken with him. “I felt it throughout my body,” she said. “A lightness had come over me.”

Leonard began spending more and more time with Marianne. They went to the beach, made love, kept house. Once, when they were apart—Marianne and Axel in Norway, Cohen in Montreal scraping up some money—he sent her a telegram: “Have house all I need is my woman and her son. Love, Leonard.”

There were times of separation, times of argument and jealousy. In the mid-sixties, as Cohen started to record his songs and win worldly success, Marianne became known to his fans as that antique figure—the muse. A memorable photograph of her, dressed only in a towel, and sitting at the desk in the house on Hydra, appeared on the back of Cohen’s second album, “Songs from a Room.” But, after they’d been together for eight years, the relationship came apart, little by little—“like falling ashes,” as Cohen put it.

Cohen was spending more time away from Hydra pursuing his career. Marianne and Axel stayed on awhile on Hydra, then left for Norway. Eventually, Marianne married again.  What Cohen’s fans knew of Marianne was her beauty and what it had inspired: “Bird on the Wire,” “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye,” and, most of all, “So Long, Marianne.” She and Cohen stayed in touch. When he toured in Scandinavia, she visited him backstage. They exchanged letters and e-mails. When they spoke to journalists and to friends of their love affair, it was always in the fondest terms.

In late July this year, Cohen received an e-mail from Jan Christian Mollestad, a close friend of Marianne’s, saying that she was suffering from cancer. In their last communication, Marianne had told Cohen that she had sold her beach house to help insure that Axel would be taken care of, but she never mentioned that she was sick. Now, it appeared, she had only a few days left. Cohen wrote back immediately:

“Well Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”

Two days later, Cohen got an e-mail from Norway:

“Dear Leonard,

Marianne slept slowly out of this life yesterday evening. Totally at ease, surrounded by close friends.

Your letter came when she still could talk and laugh in full consciousness. When we read it aloud, she smiled as only Marianne can. She lifted her hand, when you said you were right behind, close enough to reach her. It gave her deep peace of mind that you knew her condition. And your blessing for the journey gave her extra strength. . . . In her last hour I held her hand and hummed “Bird on the Wire,” while she was breathing so lightly. And when we left the room, after her soul had flown out of the window for new adventures, we kissed her head and whispered your everlasting words.

So long, Marianne . . .”

During the Seventies, Cohen set out on the first of the many long, intense tours he would reprise toward the end of his career. “One of the reasons I’m on tour is to meet people,” he said in 1971. “I consider it a reconnaissance. You know, I consider myself like in a military operation. I don’t feel like a citizen.” His time on tour inspired his 1974 masterpiece, New Skin for the Old Ceremony.

Cohen’s relationship with Suzanne Elrod during most of the Seventies resulted in two children, the photographer Lorca Cohen and Adam Cohen, who leads the group Low Millions.

In 1995, Cohen halted his career, entered the Mt. Baldy Zen Center outside of Los Angeles, became an ordained Buddhist monk and took on the Dharma name Jikan (“silence”). His duties included cooking for Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the priest and longtime Cohen mentor who died in 2014 at the age of 104. Cohen lived in a tiny cabin that he outfitted with a coffeemaker, a menorah, a keyboard, and a laptop. Like the other adepts, he cleaned toilets. He had the honor of cooking for Roshi and eventually lived in a cabin that was linked to his teacher’s by a covered walkway. For many hours a day, he sat in half lotus, meditating. If he, or anyone else, nodded off during meditation or lost the proper position, one of the monks would come by and rap him smartly on the shoulder with a wooden stick.

Cohen broke his musical silence in 2001 with Ten New Songs. While never abandoning Judaism, the Sabbath-observing songwriter attributed Buddhism to curbing the depressive episodes that had always plagued him.

The final act of Cohen’s career began in 2005 when he undertook an epic world tour during which he would perform 387 shows from 2008 to 2013. Cohen was in his mid-seventies by this time, and his manager did everything possible for the performer to marshal his energies. It was a first-class operation: a private plane, where Cohen could write and sleep; good hotels, where he could read and compose on a keyboard; a car to take him to the hotel the minute he stepped off the stage.

He continued to record as well, releasing Old Ideas (2012) and Popular Problems, which hit U.S. shops a day after his eightieth birthday. “You depend on a certain resilience that is not yours to command, but which is present,” he said upon its release. “And if you can sense this resilience or sense this capacity to continue, it means a lot more at this age than it did when I was 30, when I took it for granted.”

When the Grand Tour ended in December 2013, Cohen largely vanished from the public eye. In October 2016, he released You Want It Darker, produced by his son Adam. Severe back issues made it difficult for Cohen to leave his home, so Adam placed a microphone on his dining room table and recorded him on a laptop. Cohen’s songs are death-haunted, but then they have been since his earliest verses. The album was met with rave reviews, though a New Yorker article timed to its release revealed that he was in very poor health. “I am ready to die,” he said. “I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me.”  The new record opens with the title track, “You Want It Darker,” and in the chorus, the singer declares: “Hineni Hineni, I’m ready my Lord.”

Hineni is Hebrew for “Here I am,” Abraham’s answer to the summons of God to sacrifice his son Isaac; the song is clearly an announcement of readiness, a man at the end preparing for his service and devotion.

The singer-songwriter later clarified that he was “exaggerating.” “I’ve always been into self-dramatization,” Cohen said last month. “I intend to live forever.”

“My father passed away peacefully at his home in Los Angeles with the knowledge that he had completed what he felt was one of his greatest records,” Cohen’s son Adam wrote in a statement. “He was writing up until his last moments with his unique brand of humor.”

source: rollingstone.com, newyorker. com

Listen to this song from Leonard Cohen’s latest album.

“If I Didn’t Have Your Love”

If the sun would lose its light

And we lived an endless night

And there was nothing left that you could feel

That’s how it would be

What my life would seem to me

If I didn’t have your love to make it real

If the stars were all unpinned

And a cold and bitter wind

Swallowed up the world without a trace

Ah, well that’s where I would be

What my life would seem to me

If I couldn’t lift the veil and see your face

And if no leaves were on the tree

And no water in the sea

And the break of day had nothing to reveal

That’s how broken I would be

What my life would seem to me

If I didn’t have your love to make it real

If the sun would lose its light

And we lived in an endless night

And there was nothing left that you could feel

If the sea were sand alone

And the flowers made of stone

And no one that you hurt could ever heal

Well that’s how broken I would be

What my life would seem to me

If I didn’t have your love to make it real

“Happy”

[Verse 1:]
It might seem …… (1) what I’m about to say
Sunshine she’s here, you can  ……… (2)
I’m a hot air ……. (3) that could go to space
With the air, like I don’t care baby by the way

{Uh}

[Chorus:]
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a .….. (4)
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the .…… (5)
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do

[Verse 2:]
Here come bad ……. (6) talking this and that, yeah,
Well, give me all you got, and don’t hold it back, yeah,
Well, I should probably warn you I’ll be just .…. (7), yeah,
No offense to you, don’t waste your time
Here’s why

[Chorus]

{Hey
Go
Uh}

[Bridge:]
(Happy)
Bring me down
Can’t nothing
Bring me down
My level’s too high
Bring me down
Can’t nothing
Bring me down
I said (let me tell you now)
Bring me down
Can’t nothing
Bring me down
My level’s too high
Bring me down
Can’t nothing
Bring me down
I said

[Chorus x2]

{Hey
Go
Uh}

(Happy) [repeats]
Bring me down… can’t nothing…
Bring me down… my level’s too high…
Bring me down… can’t nothing…
Bring me down, I said (let me tell you now)

[Chorus x2]

{Hey
C’mon}

Key:

1. crazy 2. take a break 3. balloon 4. roof 5. truth 6. news 7. fine

“Happy”

[Verse 1:]
It might seem crazy what I’m about to say
Sunshine she’s here, you can take a break
I’m a hot air balloon that could go to space
With the air, like I don’t care baby by the way

{Uh}

[Chorus:]
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I’m happy
Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do

[Verse 2:]
Here come bad news talking this and that, yeah,
Well, give me all you got, and don’t hold it back, yeah,
Well, I should probably warn you I’ll be just fine, yeah,
No offense to you, don’t waste your time
Here’s why

[Chorus]

{Hey
Go
Uh}

[Bridge:]
(Happy)
Bring me down
Can’t nothing
Bring me down
My level’s too high
Bring me down
Can’t nothing
Bring me down
I said (let me tell you now)
Bring me down
Can’t nothing
Bring me down
My level’s too high
Bring me down
Can’t nothing
Bring me down
I said

[Chorus x2]

{Hey
Go
Uh}

(Happy) [repeats]
Bring me down… can’t nothing…
Bring me down… my level’s too high…
Bring me down… can’t nothing…
Bring me down, I said (let me tell you now)

[Chorus x2]

{Hey
C’mon}

Since the day that I was born

There were voices

That told me right from wrong

If I had listened

I wouldn’t be here today

Living and dying

With the choices I made

I was tempted

At an early age I found

That I liked drinking

Oh, and I never turned it down

There were loved ones

But I chased them all away

Now I’m living and dying

With the choices I made

I’ve had choices

Since the day that I was born

I heard voices

That told me right from wrong

If I had listened

Now, I wouldn’t be here today

Living and dying

With the choices I made

I’m still paying

For the things that I have done

If I could turn back

Oh, Lord I would run

But I’m still losing

This game of life I play

Now I’m living and dying

With the choices I made

I’ve had choices

Since the day that I was born

There were voices

That told me right from wrong

If I had listened

I wouldn’t be here today

Living and dying

With the choices I made

Living and dying

With the choices I made…

Can you find the English equivalent of these Hungarian sentences in the lyrics?

1. Ha meghallottam volna, akkor ma nem lennék itt.

2. Mindig volt választási lehetőségem attól a naptól kezdve, hogy megszülettem.

3. Voltak hangok, amelyek megmondták, hogy mi a jó, és mi a rossz.

4. Voltak kísértéseim.

5. Voltak szeretteim, de mind elűztem őket.

Key

1. If I had listened I wouldn’t be here.

2. I’ve had choices since the day that I was born.

3. There were voices that told me right from wrong.

4. I was tempted.

5. There were loved ones but I chased them all away. 

Go together like a horse and carriage

This I tell you brother

You can’t have one without the other

Love and marriage, love and marriage

It’s an institute you can’t disparage

Ask the local gentry

And they will say it’s elementary

Try, try, try to separate them

It’s an illusion

Try, try, try, and you will only come

To this conclusion

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like the horse and carriage

Dad was told by mother

You can’t have one, you can’t have none, you can’t have one without the other!

Listen to the song once more and fill in the gaps in the lyrics.

Love and (1)……….., love and marriage

Go together like a horse and (2) ……….

This I tell you brother

You can’t have one without the (3)…….

Love and marriage, love and marriage

It’s an (4)………… you can’t (5) ………..

Ask the local (6) ………

And they will say it’s (7)…………

Try, try, try to (8)……….. them

It’s an (9)………..

Try, try, try, and you will only come

To this (10)…………

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like the horse and carriage

Dad was told by mother

You can’t have one, you can’t have none, you can’t have one without the other

No Sir!

Key:

1. marriage

2. carriage

3. other

4. institute

5. disparage

6. gentry

7. elementary

8. separate

9. illusion

10. conclusion

Don’t need to think it over

If I’m wrong, I am right

Don’t need to look no further,

This ain’t lust

I know this is love

But if I tell the world

I’ll never say enough

’cause it was not said to you

And that’s exactly what I need to do

If I end up with you

[Chorus:]

Should I give up?

Or should I just keep chasin’ pavements

Even if it leads nowhere?

Or would it be a waste

Even if I knew my place?

Should I leave it there?

Should I give up?

Or should I just keep chasin’ pavements

Even if it leads nowhere?

I build myself up

And fly around in circles

Waitin’ as my heart drops

And my back begins to tingle

Finally, could this be it

[Chorus:]

Or should I give up?

Or should I just keep chasin’ pavements

Even if it leads nowhere?

Or would it be a waste

Even if I knew my place?

Should I leave it there?

Should I give up?

Or should I just keep chasin’ pavements

Even if it leads nowhere?

Should I give up?

Or should I just keep on chasin’ pavements

Even if it leads nowhere?

Or would it be a waste

Even if I knew my place?

Should I leave it there?

Should I give up?

Or should I just keep on chasin’ pavements?

Should I just keep on chasin’ pavements?

Ohh oh

[Chorus:]

should I give up?

Or should I just keep chasin’ pavements

Even if it leads nowhere?

Or would it be a waste

Even if I knew my place?

Should I leave it there?

should I give up?

Or should I just keep chasin’ pavements

Even if it leads nowhere?

The song is full of expressions worth learning. Can you match the expressions with their opposites?

Key

1. b.

2. e

3. a

4. c.

5. d.