Solo acoustic guitar sets the arpeggio pattern and harmonic center before any voice. The pulse arrives quickly and the body finds a settled pocket within the first few seconds, so the song's repeated guitar pattern is already proven when Cohen enters.

Cohen's baritone enters at 0:11 with the Suzanne narrative. Bass joins around 0:25, and faint harmony arrives near 0:33, gradually filling the arrangement without changing its job. The verse gives way to the first refrain at 1:00 — And you want to travel with her — which establishes the returning lyric block the song will reuse twice more. A brief guitar-only interlude follows, emptying the frame before the next verse.

The Jesus verse enters over the same guitar-and-bass frame, now carrying a different narrative without altering the musical architecture. Backing voices return partway through. The refrain reprises at 2:11 with the pronoun shifted to him, confirming that the cycle absorbs new content without changing shape. Another guitar interlude clears the frame.

The third verse brings Suzanne back, extending the lyric with new imagery — rags and feathers, the harbour, heroes in the seaweed. The arrangement holds its accumulated density: guitar, bass, and choir sustain through the longest verse. The final refrain at 3:22 returns the travel-and-trust lines one last time, completing the three-verse arc.

The pattern breaks and the pulse recedes. The arrangement thins to guitar and faint choir, then empties into silence by 3:48 with no recovery — a fade rather than a resolved cadence.

The whole song is one sustained held span with three verse-refrain cycles separated by guitar interludes; the form's work is repetition under shifting lyric perspective, and the ending lets it dissolve rather than conclude.