Leonard Cohen — You Want to Strike Back and You Cant

You want to strike back and you can't And you want to help but you can't And the gun won't shoot And the dynamite won't explode And the wind is blowing the other way And no one can hear you And death is everywhere And you're dying anyhow And you're tired of the war And you can't explain one more time You can't explain anymore And you're stuck behind your house Like an old rusted truck That will never haul another load And you're not leading your life You're leading someone else's life Someone you don't know or like And it's ending soon And it's too late to begin again Armed with what you know now And all your stupid charities Have armed the poor against you And you're not who you wanted to be Not remotely he or she How am I going to get out of this The untidy mess the untidiness Never to be clean again or free Soiled by gossip and publicity You're tired and it's over And you can't do any more That's what this silence That's what this song is for And you can't explain anymore And you can't dig in Because the surface is like steel And all your fine emotions Your subtle insights Your famous understanding Evaporate into stunning (To you) irrelevance I don't remember when I wrote this It was long before 9/11