The Flame Read online

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  Table of Contents

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  FOREWORD

  This volume contains my father’s final efforts as a poet. I wish he had seen it to completion—not because it would have been a better book in his hands, more realized and more generous and more shapely, or because it would have more closely resembled him and the form he had in mind for this offering to his readers, but because it was what he was staying alive to do, his sole breathing purpose at the end. In the difficult period in which he was composing it, he would send “do not disturb” e-mails to the few of us who would regularly drop by. He renewed his commitment to rigorous meditation so as to focus his mind through the acute pain of multiple compression fractures and the weakening of his body. He often remarked to me that, through all the strategies of art and living that he had employed during his rich and complicated life, he wished that he had more completely stayed steadfast to the recognition that writing was his only solace, his truest purpose.

  My father, before he was anything else, was a poet. He regarded this vocation, as he records in the notebooks, as some “mission from G-d.” (The hyphen indicated his reverence to the deity; his reluctance to write out the divine name, even in English, is an old Jewish custom and is further evidence of the fidelity that he mixed with his freedom.) “Religion, teachers, women, drugs, the road, fame, money … nothing gets me high and offers relief from the suffering like blackening pages, writing.” This statement of purpose was also a statement of regret: he offered his literary consecration as an explanation for what he felt was poor fatherhood, failed relationships, and inattention to his finances and health. I am reminded of one of his lesser-known songs (and one of my favorites): “I came so far for beauty, I left so much behind.” But not far enough, apparently: in his view he hadn’t left enough. And this book, he knew, was to be his last offering.

  As a kid, when I would ask my dad for money to buy sweets at the corner store, he’d often tell me to search the pockets of his blazer for loose bills or change. Invariably, I would find a notebook while going through his pockets. Later in life, when I would ask him if he had a lighter or matches, I would open drawers and find pads of paper and notebooks. Once, when I asked him if he had any tequila, I was directed to the freezer, where I found a frosty, misplaced notebook. Indeed, to know my father was (among many other wondrous things) to know a man with papers, notebooks, and cocktail napkins—a distinguished handwriting on each—scattered (neatly) everywhere. They came from nightstands in hotels, or from 99-cent stores; the ones that were gilded, leather-bound, fancy, or otherwise had a look of importance were never used. My father preferred humble vessels. By the early 1990s, there were storage lockers filled with boxes of his notebooks, notebooks containing a life of dedication to the thing that most defined the man. Writing was his reason for being. It was the fire he was tending to, the most significant flame he fueled. It was never extinguished.

  There are many themes and words that repeat throughout my father’s work: frozen, broken, naked, fire, and flame. On the back of the first album cover are (as he put it in a later song) the “flames that follow Joan of Arc.” “Who by fire?” he famously asked, in a song about fate that wickedly made use of a Jewish prayer. “I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me.” That candle was only the first of many kindlings. There are fires and flames, for creation and destruction, for heat and light, for desire and consummation, throughout his work. He lit the flames and he tended to them diligently. He studied and recorded their consequences. He was stimulated by their danger—he often spoke of other people’s art as not having enough “danger,” and he praised the “excitement of a thought that was in flames.”

  This fiery preoccupation lasted until the very end. “You want it darker, we kill the flame,” he intoned on his last album, his parting album. He died on November 7, 2016. It feels darker now, but the flame was not killed. Each page of paper that he blackened was lasting evidence of a burning soul.

  —Adam Cohen, February 2018

  EDITORIAL NOTE

  In the last months of his life, despite severe physical limitations, Leonard Cohen made selections for what would be his final volume of poems. The Flame presents this work in a format that his editors, Professors Robert Faggen and Alexandra Pleshoyano, and his longtime Canadian publisher believe reflects Leonard’s intentions, based on the manuscript that he compiled, and using stylistic choices he made for previous books as a guide. Robert Faggen began the project working closely with Leonard, and Alexandra Pleshoyano joined to assist with completion of the editing in April 2017. Adam Cohen, Leonard’s son, suggested the title.

  Leonard provided clear instructions for the organization of the book, which was to contain written work and a generous sampling of his drawings and self-portraits. He envisioned three sections. The first section contains sixty-three poems that he had carefully selected, chosen from a trove of unpublished work that spans decades. Leonard was known to work on his poems for many years—sometimes many decades—before they were published; he considered these sixty-three poems completed works.

  The second section contains the poems that became lyrics from his last four albums. All the lyrics for Leonard’s songs begin as poems, and thus they can be appreciated as poems in their own right more than those of most songwriters. Notably, Leonard has published some of his lyrics as poems in the New Yorker prior to release of the album on which the song containing the lyrics appears. This was true most recently for “Steer Your Way,” and previously for “A Street,” “Almost Like the Blues,” and “Going Home.” In presenting the lyrics of Anjani Thomas’s album Blue Alert (2006), produced by Leonard, and Leonard’s Old Ideas (2012), Popular Problems (2014), and You Want It Darker (2016), we have followed the formatting which Leonard used in his book of selected poems and songs, Stranger Music (1993), which featured many lyrics. Careful readers will note differences between how these poems appear in The Flame and how the lyrics appear in the lyrics accompanying the albums.

  The third section of the book presents a selection of entries from Leonard’s notebooks, which he kept on a daily basis from his teenage years up until the last day of his life. Robert Faggen supervised the transcription of more than three thousand pages of notebooks that span six decades. Though Leonard participated in the selection of notebook entries for The Flame, he did not specify a final order. It would be challenging—if not impossible—to proceed chronologically because Leonard would often work in the same notebooks over many years with various coloured inks showing the different entries. Leonard numbered the notebooks in a system that we do not understand. That said, we chose to follow the numerical order of the notebooks even if these are apparently not always chronological. These notebook selections include a variety of stanzas and lines—what Leonard once called “scraps”—and readers familiar with Leonard’s work will often see entries that appear to be working drafts of poems and lyrics. No attempt has been made to form a definitive narrative between these notebooks, and the entries
have been reproduced here as closely as possible to the way they appear in the notebooks themselves, with no attempts made to change punctuation or line breaks. In transcribing the notebook entries, we followed certain conventions, and the following symbols are used in listing variants: {} indicates a word or phrase written above or below the line; [?] indicates an illegible word or phrase; and *** indicates a break between notebook entries.

  In addition to these three sections of the book, Leonard wished to publish his acceptance speech for the Prince of Asturias Award, given in Spain on October 21, 2011. Elsewhere we are including—courtesy of Leonard’s friend and colleague Peter Scott—one of Leonard’s last e-mail exchanges, written less than twenty-four hours before his passing.

  Leonard had suggested that some of his self-portraits and drawings be included, a practice that he began in Book of Longing (2006). Since Leonard did not have the chance to make these selections, Alexandra Pleshoyano chose nearly seventy self-portraits from more than 370 that he created, along with twenty-four drawings from his artwork. Leonard also agreed that we could reproduce some of the notebook pages to illustrate the book; twenty such selections are included here.

  Finally, a few notes on individual poems. The poem “Full Employment” is essentially a longer version of the poem “G-d Wants His Song.” The similarity between the poem “The Lucky Night” and the poem “Drank a Lot” is also worth noting. The poem “Undertow” was released as a song on Leonard’s album Dear Heather (2004). The poem “Never Gave Nobody Trouble” was also released as a song on Leonard’s live album Can’t Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour (2015). The poems “A Street” and “Thanks for the Dance” are presented in slightly different versions as lyrics in the second part of the book. Those familiar with the Leonard Cohen Files website, hosted by Jarkko Arjatsalo, will recognize a few poems, self-portraits, and drawings, which had been posted there with Leonard’s permission.

  Robert Faggen and Alexandra Pleshoyano

  July 2018

  POEMS

  HAPPENS TO THE HEART

  I was always working steady

  But I never called it art

  I was funding my depression

  Meeting Jesus reading Marx

  Sure it failed my little fire

  But it’s bright the dying spark

  Go tell the young messiah

  What happens to the heart

  There’s a mist of summer kisses

  Where I tried to double-park

  The rivalry was vicious

  And the women were in charge

  It was nothing, it was business

  But it left an ugly mark

  So I’ve come here to revisit

  What happens to the heart

  I was selling holy trinkets

  I was dressing kind of sharp

  Had a pussy in the kitchen

  And a panther in the yard

  In the prison of the gifted

  I was friendly with the guard

  So I never had to witness

  What happens to the heart

  I should have seen it coming

  You could say I wrote the chart

  Just to look at her was trouble

  It was trouble from the start

  Sure we played a stunning couple

  But I never liked the part

  It ain’t pretty, it ain’t subtle

  What happens to the heart

  Now the angel’s got a fiddle

  And the devil’s got a harp

  Every soul is like a minnow

  Every mind is like a shark

  I’ve opened every window

  But the house, the house is dark

  Just say Uncle, then it’s simple

  What happens to the heart

  I was always working steady

  But I never called it art

  The slaves were there already

  The singers chained and charred

  Now the arc of justice bending

  And the injured soon to march

  I lost my job defending

  What happens to the heart

  I studied with this beggar

  He was filthy he was scarred

  By the claws of many women

  He had failed to disregard

  No fable here no lesson

  No singing meadowlark

  Just a filthy beggar blessing

  What happens to the heart

  I was always working steady

  But I never called it art

  I could lift, but nothing heavy

  Almost lost my union card

  I was handy with a rifle

  My father’s .303

  We fought for something final

  Not the right to disagree

  Sure it failed my little fire

  But it’s bright the dying spark

  Go tell the young messiah

  What happens to the heart

  June 24, 2016

  I DO

  I do, I love you Mary

  More than I can say

  Cuz if I ever said it

  They’d take us both away

  They’d lock us up for nothing

  And throw away the key

  The world don’t like us Mary

  They’re on to you and me

  We got a minute Mary

  Before they pull the plug

  50 seconds maybe

  You know that’s not enough

  30 seconds baby

  Is all we got to love

  And if they catch us laughing

  They gonna rough us up

  I do, I love you Mary

  More than I can say

  Cuz if I ever said it

  They’d take us both away

  They’d lock us up for nothing

  And throw away the key

  The world don’t like us Mary

  They’re on to you and me

  LAMBCHOPS

  thinking of those lambchops

  at Moishe’s the other night

  we all taste good to one another

  most bodies are good to eat

  even reptiles and insects

  even the poisonous lutefisk of Norway

  buried in the dirt a million years before serving

  and the poisonous blowfish of Japan

  can be prepared

  to insure reasonable risks

  at the table

  if the crazy god did not want us to eat one another

  why make our flesh so sweet

  I heard it on the radio

  a happy rabbit at the rabbit farm

  saying to the animal psychic

  don’t be sad

  it’s lovely here

  they’re so good to us

  we’re not the only ones

  said the rabbit

  comforting her

  everyone gets eaten

  as the rabbit said

  to the animal psychic

  2006

  NO TIME TO CHANGE

  No time to change

  The backward look

  It’s much too late

  My gentle book

  Too late to make

  The men ashamed

  For what they do

  With naked flames

  Too late to fall

  Upon my sword

  I have no sword

  It’s 2005

  How dare I care

  What’s on my plate

  O gentle book

  You’re much too late

  You missed the point

  Of poetry

  It’s all about them

  Not about me

  I DIDN’T KNOW

  I knew that I was weak

  I knew that you were strong

  I did not dare to kneel

  Where I did not belong

  And if I meant to touch

  Your beauty with my hand

  Then come the boils and blood

  Which I would understand

  You tore
your knees apart

  The loneliness revealed

  That drew this unborn heart

  From chains that would not yield

  But weakened by your exercise

  You fell against my soul

  The stricken soul the mind denies

  Until you make it whole

  So I can love your beauty now

  Though seeming from afar

  Until my neutral world allow

  How intimate you are

  Sometimes it gets so lonely

  I don’t know what to do

  I’d trade my stash of boredom

  For a little hit of you

  I didn’t know

  I didn’t know

  I didn’t know

  How much you needed me

  I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE

  O apple of the world

  we weren’t married on the surface

  we were married at the core

  I can’t take it anymore

  surely there must be

  a limit for the rich

  and a hope unto the poor

  I can’t take it anymore

  and the lies that they tell

  about G-d

  as if they owned the store

  I can’t take it anymore

  UNDERTOW

  I set out one night

  When the tide was low

  There were signs in the sky

  But I did not know

  I’d be caught in the grip

  Of the undertow

  And ditched on a beach

  Where the sea hates to go

  With a child in my arms

  And a chill in my soul

  And my heart the shape

  Of a begging bowl

  ON RARE OCCASIONS

  On rare occasions

  the power was given me

  to send waves of emotion

  through the world.

  These were impersonal events,

  over which I had no control.

  I climbed on the outdoor stage

  as the sun was going down

  behind the Tower of Toledo

  and the people did not let me go

  until the middle of the night.