Leonard Cohen - The Jungle Line lyrics

Rousseau walks on trumpet paths Safaris to the heart of all that jazz Through I bars and girders, through wires and pipes The mathematic circuits of the modern nights Through huts, through Harlem, through jails and gospel pews Through the cla** on park and the trash on vine Through Europe and the deep, deep heart of Dixie blue Through savage progress cuts the jungle line In a low cut blouse she brings the beer Rousseau paints a jungle flower behind her ear Those cannibals of shuck and jive They'll eat a working girl like her alive With his hard edged eye and his steady hand He paints the cellar full of ferns and orchid vines And he hangs a moon above a five piece band He hangs it up above the jungle line The jungle line, the jungle line Screaming in a ritual of sound and time Floating, drifting on the air-conditioned wind And drooling for a taste of something smuggled in Pretty women funneled through valves and smoke Coy and b**hy, wild and fine And charging elephants and chanting slaving boats Charging, chanting down the jungle line There's a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb There's a poppy snake in a dressing room Poppy poison, poppy tourniquet It slithers away on bra** like mouthpiece spit And metal skin and ivory birds Go steaming up to Rousseau's vines They go steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge Steaming, steaming, steaming up the jungle line