Maybe he doesn’t mean a thing to me anymore but I think he was like me.
You didn’t expect to fall in love, I said to myself and at the same time I answered gently, Do you think so?
I heard you humming beautifully, your hum said that I can’t ignore you, that I’d finally come around for a number of delicious reasons that only you knew about, and here I am, Miss Blood.
And you won’t come back, you won’t come back to where you left me, and that’s why you keep my number, so you don’t dial it by mistake when you’re fooling with the dial not even dialing numbers.
You begin to bore us with your pain and we have decided to change your pain.
You said you were happiest when you danced, you said you were happiest when you danced with me, now which do you mean?
And so we changed his pain, we threw the idea of a body at him and we told him a joke, and then he thought a great deal about laughing and about the code.
And he thought that she thought that he thought that she thought that the worst thing a woman could do was to take a man away from his work because that made her what, ugly or beautiful?
And now you have entered the mathematical section of your soul which you claimed you never had. I suppose that this, plus the broken heart, makes you believe that now you have a perfect right to go out and tame the sadists.
He had the last line of each verse of the song but he didn’t have any of the other lines, the last line was always the same, Don’t call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it.
He thought he knew, or he actually did know too much about singing to be a singer; and if there actually is such a condition, is anybody in it, and are sadists born there?
It is not a question mark, it is not an exclamation point, it is a full stop by the man who wrote Parasites of Heaven.
Even if we stated our case very clearly and all those who held as we do came to our side, all of them, we would still be very few.
1966
I am a priest of G-d
I walk down the road
with my pockets in my hand
Sometimes I’m bad
then sometimes I’m very good
I believe that I believe
everything I should
I like to hear you say
when you dance with head rolling
upon a silver tray
that I am a priest of G-d
I thought I was doing 100 other things
but I was a priest of G-d
I loved 100 women
never told the same lie twice
I said O Christ you’re selfish
but I shared my bread and rice
I heard my voice tell the crowd
that I was alone and a priest of G-d
making me so empty
that even now in 1966
I’m not sure I’m a priest of G-d
In almond trees lemon trees
wind and sun do as they please
Butterflies and laundry flutter
My love her hair is blonde as butter
Wasps with yellow whiskers wait
for food beside her china plate
Ants beside her little feet
are there to share what she will eat
Who chopped down the bells that say
the world is born again today
We will feed you all my dears
this morning or in later years
Suzanne takes you down
to her place near the river,
you can hear the boats go by
you can stay the night beside her.
And you know that she’s half crazy
but that’s why you want to be there
and she feeds you tea and oranges
that come all the way from China.
Just when you mean to tell her
that you have no gifts to give her,
she gets you on her wave-length
and she lets the river answer
that you’ve always been her lover.
And you want to travel with her,
you want to travel blind
and you know that she can trust you
because you’ve touched her perfect body
with your mind
Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water
and he spent a long time watching
from a lonely wooden tower
and when he knew for certain
only drowning men could see him
he said All men will be sailors then
until the sea shall free them,
but he himself was broken
long before the sky would open,
forsaken, almost human,
he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.
And you want to travel with him,
you want to travel blind
and you think maybe you’ll trust him
because he touched your perfect body
with his mind.
Suzanne takes your hand
and she leads you to the river,
she is wearing rags and feathers
from Salvation Army counters.
The sun pours down like honey
on our lady of the harbour
as she shows you where to look
among the garbage and the flowers,
there are heroes in the seaweed
there are children in the morning,
they are leaning out for love
they will lean that way forever
while Suzanne she holds the mirror.
And you want to travel with her
and you want to travel blind
and you’re sure that she can find you
because she’s touched her perfect body
with her mind.
Give me back my fingerprints
My fingertips are raw
If I don’t get my fingerprints
I have to call the Law
I touched you once too often
& I don’t know who I am
My fingerprints were missing
When I wiped away the jam
I called my fingerprints all night
But they don’t seem to care
The last time that I saw them
They were leafing thru your hair
I thought I’d leave this morning
So I emptied out your drawer
A hundred thousand fingerprints
Floated to the floor
You hardly stooped to pick them up
You don’t count what you lose
You don’t even seem to know
Whose fingerprints are whose
When I had to say goodbye
You weren’t there to find
You took my fingerprints away
So I would love your mind
I don’t pretend to understand
Just what you mean by that
But nextime I’ll inquire
Before I scratch your back
I wonder if my fingerprints
Get lonely in the crowd
There are no others like them
& that should make them proud
Now you want to marry me
& take me down the aisle
& throw confetti fingerprints
You know that’s not my style
Sure I’d like to marry
But I won’t face the dawn
With any girl who knew me
When my fingerprints were on
1966
Foreign G-d, reigning in earthly glory between the G-dless G-d and this greedy telescope of mine: touch my hidden jelly muscle, ring me with some power, I must conquer Babylon and New York. Draw me with a valuable sign, raise me to your height. You and I, dear Foreign G-d, we both are demons who must disappear in the perpetual crawling light, the fumbling sparks printing the shape of each tired form. We must be lost soon in the elementary kodak experiment, in the paltry glory beyond our glory, the chalksqueak of our most limitless delight. We are
devoted yokels of the mothy parachute, the salvation of ordeal, we paid good money for the perfect holy scab, the pilgrim kneecap, the shoulder freakish under burden, the triumphant snowman who does not freeze. Down with your angels, Foreign G-d, down with us, adepts of magic: into the muddy fire of our furthest passionate park, let us consign ourselves now, puddles, peep-holes, dreary oceanic pomp seen through the right end of the telescope, the minor burn, the kingsize cigarette, the alibi atomic holocaust, let us consign ourselves to the unmeasured exile outside the rules of lawlessness. O G-d, in thy foreign or godless form, in thy form of illusion or with the ringscape of your lethal thumb, you stop direction, you crush this down, you abandon the evidence you pressed on its tongue.
1965
This morning I was dressed by the wind.
The sky said, close your eyes and run
this happy face into a sundrift.
The forest said, never mind, I am as old
as an emerald, walk into me gossiping.
The village said, I am perfect and intricate,
would you like to start right away?
My darling said, I am washing my hair in the water
we caught last year, it tastes of stone.
This morning I was dressed by the wind,
it was the middle of September in 1965.
I believe you heard your master sing
while I lay sick in bed
I believe he told you everything
I keep locked in my head
Your master took you travelling
at least that’s what you said
O love did you come back to bring
your prisoner wine and bread
You met him at a nightclub where
they take your clothes at the door
He was just a numberless man of a pair
who has just come back from the war
You wrap his quiet face in your hair
and he hands you the apple core
and he touches your mouth now so suddenly bare
of the kisses you had on before
He gave you a German Shepherd to walk
with a collar of leather and nails
He never once made you explain or talk
about all of the little details
such as who had a worm and who had a rock
and who had you through the mails
Your love is a secret all over the block
and it never stops when he fails
He took you on his air-o-plane
which he flew without any hands
and you cruised above the ribbons of rain
that drove the crowd from the stands
Then he killed the lights on a lonely lane
where an ape with angel glands
erased the final wisps of pain
with the music of rubber bands
And now I hear your master sing
You pray for him to come
His body is a golden string
that your body is hanging from
His body is a golden string
My body is growing numb
O love I hear your master sing
Your shirt is all undone
Will you kneel beside the bed
we polished long ago
before your master chose instead
to make my bed of snow
Your hair is wild your knuckles red
and you’re speaking much too low
I can’t make out what your master said
before he made you go
I think you’re playing far too rough
For a lady who’s been to the moon
I’ve lain by the window long enough
(you get used to an empty room)
Your love is some dust in an old man’s cuff
who is tapping his foot to a tune
and your thighs are a ruin and you want too much
Let’s say you came back too soon
I loved your master perfectly
I taught him all he knew
He was starving in a mystery
like a man who is sure what is true
I sent you to him with my guarantee
I could teach him something new
I taught him how you would long for me
No matter what he said no matter what you do
I stepped into an avalanche
It covered up my soul
When I am not a hunchback
I sleep beneath a hill
You who wish to conquer pain
Must learn to serve me well
You strike my side by accident
As you go down for gold
The cripple that you clothe and feed
is neither starved nor cold
I do not beg for company
in the centre of the world
When I am on a pedestal
you did not raise me there
your laws do not compel me
to kneel grotesque and bare
I myself am pedestal
for the thing at which you stare
You who wish to conquer pain
must learn what makes me kind
The crumbs of love you offer me
are the crumbs I’ve left behind
Your pain is no credential
It is the shadow of my wound
I have begun to claim you
I who have no greed
I have begun to long for you
I who have no need
The avalanche you’re knocking at
is uninhabited
Do not dress in rags for me
I know you are not poor
Don’t love me so fiercely
when you know you are not sure
It is your world beloved
It is your flesh I wear
By Leonard Cohen
Book of Mercy (1984)
Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (1993)
Book of Longing (2006)
The Flame: Poems and Selections from Notebooks (2018)
Leonard Cohen’s artistic career began in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies. He published two novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers, and ten books of poetry, including Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs and Book of Longing. During a recording career that spanned almost fifty years, he released fourteen studio albums, the last of which, You Want It Darker, was released in 2016. Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, and was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature and the Glenn Gould Prize in 2011. He died on November 7, 2016.