Selected Poems, 1956-1968

by Leonard Cohen

  two shining people know, they go directly to the roots they

  lie between. For my part I describe the whole orchard.

  F O U N D O N C E A G A I N S H A M E L E S S L Y

  I G N O R I N G T H E S W A N S • . .

  Found once again shamelessly ignoring the swans who inflame the spectators on the shores of American rivers; found once again allowing the juicy contract to expire because the

  telephone has a magic correspondence with my tapeworm;

  found once again leaving the garlanded manhood in danger

  of long official repose while it is groomed for marble in

  seedily historic back rooms; found once again humiliating

  the bank clerk with eye-to-eye wrestling, art dogma, lives

  that loaf and stare, and other stage whispers of genius;

  found once again the chosen object of heavenly longing

  such as can ambush a hermit in a forest with visions of a

  busy parking lot; found once again smelling mothball

  sweaters, titling home movies, untangling Victorian salmon

  rods, fanatically convinced that a world of sporty order is

  just around the corner; found once again planning the ideal

  lonely year which waits like first flesh love on a calendar of

  third choices; found once again hovering like a twine-eating

  kite over hands that feed me, verbose under the influence

  of astrology; found one again selling out to accessible local

  purity while Pentagon Tiffany evil alone can guarantee my

  power; found once again trusting that my friends grew up

  in Eden and will not harm me when at last I am armourless

  and absolutely silent; found once again at the very beginning, veteran of several useless ordeals, prophetic but not seminal, the purist for the masses of tomorrow; found once

  again sweetening life which I have abandoned, like a fired

  zoo-keeper sneaking peanuts to publicized sodomized elephants; found once again flaunting the rainbow which demonstrates that I am permitted only that which I urgently

  need; found once again cleansing my tongue of all possibilities, of all possibilities but my perfect one.

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  I •93

  W H E N I H E A R Y O U S I N G

  When I hear you sing

  Solomon

  animal throat, eyes beaming

  sex and wisdom

  My hands ache from

  I left blood on the doors of my home

  Solomon

  I am very alone from aiming songs

  at God for

  I thought that bes�de me there was no one

  Solomon

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  H E W A S L A M E

  He was lame

  as a 3 legged dog

  screamed as he came

  through the fog

  If you are the Light

  give me a light

  buddy

  I A M T O O L O U D W H E N Y O U A R E G O N E

  I am too loud when you are gone

  I am John the Baptist, cheated by mere water

  and merciful love, wild but over-known

  John of honey, of time, longing not for

  music, longing, longing to be Him

  I am diminished, I peddle versions of Word

  that don't survive the tablets broken stone

  I am alone when you are gone

  I 1 95

  S O M E W H E R E I N M Y T R O P H Y R O O M . . .

  Somewhere in my trophy room the crucifixion and other

  sacrifices were still going on, but the flesh and nails were

  grown over with rust and I could not tell where the flesh

  ended and the wood began or on which wall the instruments were hung.

  I passed by limbs and faces arranged in this museum like

  hanging kitchen tools, and some brushed my arm as the

  hallway reeled me in, but I pocketed my hands along with

  some vulnerable smiles, and I continued on.

  I heard the rooms 'behind me clamour an instant for my

  brain, and once the brain responded, out of habit, weakly,

  as if thinking someone else's history, and somewhere in that

  last tune it learned that it was not the Queen, it was a

  drone.

  There ahead of me extended an impossible trophy: the

  bright, great sky, where no men lived. Beautiful and empty,

  now luminous with a splendour emanating from my own

  flesh, the tuneless sky washed and washed my lineless face

  and bathed in waves my heart like a red translucent stone.

  Until my eyes gave out I lived there as my home.

  Today I know the only distance that I came was to the

  threshold of my trophy room. Among the killing instruments again I am further from sacrifice than when I began.

  I do not stare or plead with passing pilgrims to help me

  there. I call it discipline but perhaps it is fallen pride alone.

  I'm not the one to learn an exercise for dwelling in the sky.

  My trophy room is vast and hung with crutches, ladders,

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  braces, hooks. Unlike the invalid's cathedral, men hang with

  these instruments. A dancing wall of molecules, changing

  nothing, has cleared a place for me and my time.

  Y O U K N O W W H E R E I H A V E B E E N

  You know where I have been

  Why my knees are raw

  I'd like to speak to you

  Who will see what I saw

  Some men who saw me fall

  Spread the news of failure

  I want to speak to them

  The dogs of literature

  Pass me as I proudly

  Passed the others

  Who kneel in secret flight

  Pass us proudly Brothers

  I 197

  I M E T A W O M A N L O N G A G O

  I met a woman long ago,

  hair black as black can go.

  Are you a teacher of the heart?

  Soft she answered No.

  I met a girl across the sea,

  hair the gold that gold can be.

  Are you a teacher of the heart?

  Yes, but not for thee.

  I knew a man who ,lost his mind

  in some lost place I wished to find.

  Follow me, he said,

  but he walked behind.

  I walked into a hospital

  Where none was sick and none was well.

  When at night the nurses left,

  I could not walk at all.

  Not too slow, not too soon

  morning came, then came noon.

  Dinner time a scalpel blade

  lay beside my spoon.

  Some girls wander by mistake

  into the mess that scalpels make.

  Are you teachers of the heart?

  We teach old hearts to break.

  One day I woke up alone,

  hospital and nurses gone.

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  Have I carved enough?

  You are a bone.

  I ate and ate and ate,

  I didn't miss a plate.

  How much do these suppers cost?

  We'll take it out in hate.

  I spent my hatred every place,

  on every work, on every face.

  Someone gave me wishes.

  I wished for an embrace.

  Several girls embraced me, then

  I was embraced by men.

  Is my passion perfect?

  Do it once again.

  I was handsome, I was strong,

  I knew the words of every song.

  Did my singing please you?

  The words you sang were wrong.

  Who are you whom I address?

  Who takes down what I confess?

  Are you a
teacher of the heart?

  A chorus answered Yes.

  Teachers, are my lessons done

  or must I learn another one?

  They cried: Dear Sir or Madam,

  Daughter, Son.

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  I ' V E S E E N S O M E L O N E L Y H I S T O R Y

  I've seen some lonely history

  The heart cannot explore

  I've scratched some empty blackboards

  They have no teachers for

  I trailed my meagre demons

  From Jerusalem to Rome

  I had an invitation

  But the host was not at home

  There were contagjous armies

  That spread their uniform

  To all parts of my body

  Except where I was warm

  And so I wore a helmet

  With a secret neon sign

  That lit up all the boundaries

  So I could toe the line

  My boots got very tired

  Like a sentry's never should

  I was walking on a tightrope

  That was buried in the mud

  Standing at the drugstore

  It was very hard to Jearn

  Though my name was everywhere

  I had to wait my turn

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  I'm standing here before you

  I don't know what I bring

  If you can hear the music

  Why don't you help me sing

  S N O W I S F A L L I N G

  Snow is falling.

  There is a nude in my room.

  She surveys the wine-coloured carpet.

  She is eighteen.

  She has straight hair.

  She speaks no Montreal language.

  She doesn't feel like sitting down.

  She shows no gooseflesh.

  We can hear the storm.

  She is lighting a cigarette

  from the gas range.

  She holds back her long hair.

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  C R E A T E D F I R E S I C A N N O T L O V E

  Created fires I cannot love

  lest I lose the ones above.

  Poor enough, then I'll learn

  to choose the fires where they burn.

  0 God, make me poor enough

  to love your diamond in the rough,

  or in my failure let me see

  my greed raised to mystery.

  Do you hate the opes who must

  turn your world all to dust?

  Do you hate the ones who ask

  if Creation wears a mask?

  God beyond the God I name,

  if mask and fire are the same,

  repair the seam my love leaps through,

  uncreated fire to pursue.

  Network of created fire,

  maim my love and my desire.

  Make me poor so I may be

  servant in the world I see,

  Or, as my love leaps wide,

  confirm your servant in his pride:

  if my love can't burn,

  forbid a sickening return.

  Is it here my love will train

  not to leap so high again?

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  No praise here? no blame?

  From my love you tear my name.

  Unmake me as I'm washed

  far from the fiery mask.

  Gather my pride in the coded pain

  which is also your domain.

  C L A I M M E , B L O O D , I F Y O U

  H A V E A S T O R Y

  Claim me, blood, if you have a story

  to tell with my Jewish face,

  you are strong and holy still, only

  speak, like the Zohar, of a carved-out place

  into which I must pour myself like wine,

  an emptiness of history which I must seize

  and occupy, calm and full in this confine,

  becoming clear "like good wine on its lees."

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  H E W A S B E A U T I F U L W H E N H E

  S A T A L O N E

  He was beautiful when he sat alone, he was like me, he had

  wide lapels, he was holding the mug in the hardest possible

  way so that his fingers were all twisted but still long and

  beautiful, he didn't like to sit alone all the time, but this

  time, I swear, he didn't care one way or the other.

  I'll tell you why I like to sit alone, because I'm a sadist,

  that's why we like to sit alone, because we're the sadists wao

  like to sit alone.

  He sat alone because he was beautifully dressed for the

  occasion and because he was not a civilian.

  We are the sadists you don't have to worry about, you think,

  and we have no opinion on the matter of whether you have

  to worry about us, and we don't even like to think about

  the matter because it baffles us.

  Maybe he doesn't mean a thing to me any more 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

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  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.

  I 205

  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.

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  I A M A P R I E S T O F G O D

  I am a priest of God

  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 God

  I thought I was doing 100 other things

  but I was a priest of God

  I loved 100 women

  never
told the same lie twice

  I said 0 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 God

  making me so empty

  that even now in 1966

  I'm not sure I'm a priest of God

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  I N A L M O N D T R E E S L E M O N T R E E S

  In almond trees lemon trees

  wind and sun do as they please

  Butterflies and laundry flutter

  My love her hair is blond 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

  2os 1

  S U Z A N N E T A K E S Y O U D O W N

  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,

  I !.!09

  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,