My Remake of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah

Here's something unusual. I heard Leonard Cohen's song, "Hallelujah," and loved it, but I found the lyrics unrelievedly, almost monochromatically, diminished.

So I conceived the challenge: could I write new lyrics for the song--lyrics that would equal (if not surpass) the quality of the original lyrics, lyrics that would express a positively augmented view of the universe yet not be brightly pollyannish?

Ladies and gentlemen, here it is:


The streets were filled with dying men,
The women whom you'd once again
Disappointed when they saw right through ya.
But underneath the dust, you saw
The rising lava of the law,
The owners of each store sang hallelujah.

The craters of the silent moon
Poured out their silver streams, and soon
The stars of empty space were flying through ya.
The mountain top, the frozen air,
Your coal black horse, your streaming hair,
Without words, your soul cried, hallelujah

When hunger melted all their pride,
On the hill the groom and bride
Were singing to each other, singing to ya.
The woods were still, the roads all roared
Diminished and augmented chords,
That thundered in the halls of hallelujah.

So I set down my golden pen
I wrapped myself in silk and Zen,
I was all alone and I outgrew ya.
But I returned to clean the bath,
I felt the joy, the pity, wrath,
And it was all a muted hallelujah.

Joshua listened to the Lord,
The trumpet blast, the crashing chord
Shivered Jericho and overthrew ya.
The walls sank down into the ground,
And from a broken room, the sound In the midst of battle, hallelujah.