Parasites of Heaven Read online

  Original edition copyright © Leonard Cohen, 1966

  First McClelland & Stewart edition 1966.

  This edition 2018.

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  McClelland & Stewart and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Cohen, Leonard, 1934-2016, author

  Parasites of heaven / Leonard Cohen.

  Originally published: 1966.

  Poems.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 9780771024528 (softcover).—ISBN 9780771024597 (EPUB)

  I. Title.

  PS8505.O22P3 2018  C811’.54  C2018-901594-2

                    C2018-901595-0

  Book design by Five Seventeen

  McClelland & Stewart,

  a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited,

  a Penguin Random House Company

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v5.3.2

  a

  For Irving Layton

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Poetry Disclaimer

  So you’re the kind of vegetarian

  It’s not so hard to say goodbye

  The nightmares do not suddenly

  A cross didn’t fall on me

  In the Bible generations pass…

  Ah, what were the names I gave you

  One night I burned the house I loved

  Give me dog, dogs, wolves, to serve, praise, kneel

  You know there was honey in my system

  Nothing has been broken

  Here we are at the window

  When I paid the sun to run

  O love intrude into this strangerhood

  Clean as the grass from which

  Terribly awake I wait

  I wonder if my brother will ever read this

  I see you on a Greek mattress

  Suzanne wears a leather coat

  Desperate sexual admirals

  Nancy lies in London grass

  You broke the thin highway

  Two went to sleep

  What did I do with my breath

  I met Doc Dog The Poker Hound

  Found once again shamelessly ignoring the swans…

  The stars turn their noble stories

  When I hear you sing

  My secret fell on a language

  A goldfish died in a cloudy bowl

  O G-d as I called you before

  Here was the Harbour, crowded with white ships…

  He was lame

  I am too loud when you are gone

  You know where I have been

  Somewhere in my trophy room…

  I guess it’s time to say goodbye…

  For a long while I have been watching the city

  I was standing on the stairs

  Snow is falling

  Here was the Market…

  I am anointed with directions

  I met a woman long ago

  You are The Model

  I’ve seen some lonely history

  No disease or age makes the flesh unwind

  These notebooks, these notebooks

  Created fires I cannot love

  Claim me, blood, if you have a story

  When a world is being born

  He was beautiful when he sat alone…

  I am a priest of G-d

  In almond trees lemon trees

  Suzanne takes you down

  Give me back my fingerprints

  Foreign G-d, reigning in earthly glory…

  This morning I was dressed by the wind

  I believe you heard your master sing

  I stepped into an avalanche

  By Leonard Cohen

  About the Author

  This title contains long lines of poetry. The line of characters below indicates approximately the longest line in the text:

  soft as the footprints of a man moving in thought or devotion.

  To most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the printed page, you may choose to decrease the size of the text on your viewer and/or change the orientation of your screen until the above line of characters fits on a single line. This may not be possible on all e-reading devices. Viewing this title at a higher than optimal text size or on a screen too small to accommodate the longest lines in the text will alter the reading experience and may cause single lines of some poems to display as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent.

  So you’re the kind of vegetarian

  that only eats roses

  Is that what you mean

  with your Beautiful Losers

  1965

  It’s not so hard to say goodbye. True, the mind bleeds a little, but if you don’t part your hair too deep nobody will mention it. And true, the ego aches like a tooth with sugar in it when it accepts at long last an alien perfection, but still the goodbyes will be made, and not from such a long way off as you thought. We’re only over here, climbing the shining reflection of the rickety ladder that gave way under you, our boots snapping through the rungs with the sound of a machine gun. Look! that’s a smile on the skull. Last year we thought that only hypocrites did that to their mouths.

  The nightmares do not suddenly

  develop happy endings

  I merely step out of them

  as a five year old scientist

  leaves the room

  where he has dissected an alarm clock

  Love wears out

  like overused mirrors unsilvering

  and parts of your faces

  make room for the wall behind

  If terror needs my round green eyes

  for a masterpiece

  let it lure them with nude key-holes

  mounted on an egg

  And should Love decide

  I am not the one

  to stand scratching his head

  wondering what wall to lean on

  send King Farouk to argue

  or come to me dressed as a fast

  A cross didn’t fall on me

  when I went for hot-dogs

  and the all-night Greek

  slave in the Silver Gameland

  didn’t think I was his brother

  Love me because nothing happens

  I believe the rain will not

  make me feel like a feather

  when it comes tonight after

  the streetcars have stopped

  because my size is definite

  Love me because nothing happens

  Do you have any idea how

  many movies I had to watch

  before I knew surely

  that I would love you

  when the lights woke up

  Love me because nothing happens

  Here is a headline July 14

  in the city of Montreal

  Intervention décisive de Pearson

  à la conference du Commonwealth

  That was yesterday

  Love me because nothing happens

  Stars and stars and stars

  keep it to themselves

  Have you ever noticed how private

  a wet tree is

  a curtain of razor blade
s

  Love me because nothing happens

  Why should I be alone

  if what I say is true

  I confess I mean to find

  a passage or forge a passport

  or talk a new language

  Love me because nothing happens

  I confess I meant to grow

  wings and lose my mind

  I confess that I’ve

  forgotten what for

  Why wings and a lost mind

  Love me because nothing happens

  In the Bible generations pass in a paragraph, a betrayal is disposed of in a phrase, the creation of the world consumes a page. I could never pick the important dynasty out of a multitude, you must have your forehead shining to do that, or to choose out of the snarled network of daily evidence the denials and the loyalties. Who can choose what olive tree the story will need to shade its lovers, what tree out of the huge orchard will give them the particular view of branches and sky which will unleash their kisses. Only two shining people know, they go directly to the roots they lie between. For my part I describe the whole orchard.

  Ah, what were the names I gave you

  before I learned all names go the do-do way?

  Darlin, Golden, Meadowheart

  I’ve been walking in the far green

  I’ve lost what all the leaves are called

  Elm, Chestnut, Silver

  O come here you, thou

  Bring all thy, bring all thine

  Far into the splinter let’s sing for nothing

  1958

  One night I burned the house I loved,

  It lit a perfect ring

  In which I saw some weeds and stone

  Beyond—not anything.

  Certain creatures of the air

  Frightened by the night,

  They came to see the world again

  And perished in the light.

  Now I sail from sky to sky

  And all the blackness sings

  Against the boat that I have made

  Of mutilated wings.

  1960

  Give me dog, dogs, wolves, to serve, praise, kneel

  in thanks. Bring me torn by sin, stuffed with loot,

  bring me in their wild midst, in the spiked ring

  of white teeth, sharp fangs, wet mouths, cast me hard

  and down. I am not food, the calf, the ewe,

  I am the man to be sent to love, but

  clawed first, cleansed first, taught to fight, to lose, save

  my skin, my stained skin, my own old soft shell

  1961

  You know there was honey in my system

  but I filled a honey jar

  and I hid it with the moon and sun up there

  It’s time to be sweet again

  to the poor ladies and gentlemen

  Now my horoscope is starving

  I’ve got to find that sticky jar

  You can wait for signals and comets

  I’m going to follow the honey flies

  They aren’t so bad

  Some say that flies are man’s best friend

  Even though they tore my sleep apart

  they were just doing their job

  They’re never wrong about the honey

  That’s proved by the nervous sky

  and the legions dead or kicking

  all along the rim of the jar

  Why did I hide it so far away

  Was I worried about my weight

  I don’t know I don’t know

  I didn’t think anybody wanted breakfast

  or I would have stayed at home

  Well never mind the mornings

  you tried to get the rich to love you

  Put it down to love

  The 11th story window is buzzing thick with flies

  And listen so you’ll remember

  just what it was you did

  That’s not the Milky Way up there

  That’s sticky paper from your store

  It’s not too late for goodbyes

  That’s what I want to tell you all

  who are waiting with indifferent expressions

  between me and the honey flies

  Hey there they are

  sailing like a cyclone

  that dips into everything you hide

  They’re black as hair

  they rent the air

  for a dollar thirty-five

  They suck you through the small end of their telescope

  There’s no hope they say

  It’s our office

  step inside it’s a very short ride

  when you’re a guest of the honey flies

  Nothing has been broken

  though one of the links of the chain

  is a blue butterfly

  Here he was attacked

  They smiled as they came and retired

  baffled with blue dust

  The banks so familiar with metal

  they made for the wings

  The thick vaults fluttered

  The pretty girls advanced

  their fingers cupped

  They bled from the mouth as though struck

  The jury asked for pity

  and touched and were electrocuted

  by the blue antennae

  A thrust at any link

  might have brought him down

  but each of you aimed at the blue butterfly

  1963

  Here we are at the window. Great unbound sheaves of rain wandering across the mountain, parades of wind and driven silver grass. So long I’ve tried to give a name to freedom, today my freedom lost its name, like a student’s room travelling into the morning with its lights still on. Every act has its own style of freedom, whatever that means. Now I’m commanded to think of weeds, to worship the strong weeds that grew through the night, green and wet, the white thread roots taking lottery orders from the coils of brain mud, the permeable surface of the world. Did you know that the brain developed out of a fold in the epidermis? Did you? Falling ribbons of silk, the length of rivers, cross the face of the mountain, systems of grass and cable. Freedom lost its name to the style with which things happen. The straight trees, the spools of weed, the travelling skeins of rain floating through the folds of the mountain—here we are at the window. Are you ready now? Have I dismissed myself? May I fire from the hip? Brothers, each at your window, we are the style of so much passion, we are the order of style, we are pure style called to delight a fold of the sky.

  1965

  When I paid the sun to run

  It ran and I sat down and cried

  The sun I spent my money on

  Went round and round inside

  The world all at once

  Charged with insignificance

  O love intrude into this strangerhood

  Like the bloodblack river

  Drive a stain of living colour

  Through leper drifts of winter sleep

  Silence be my wilderness

  Where I can learn to master

  As my heroes did

  The visionary discipline

  Then bear me to the shores

  Of lakes we slept beside

  Where I may lose with grace

  The pine trees to the early mist

  1959

  Clean as the grass from which

  the sun has burned little dew

  I come to this page

  in the not so early morning

  with a picture of him

  whom I could not be for long

  not wanting to return or begin

  again the idolatry of terror

  He was burned away from me

  by needles by ashes

  by various shames I

  engineered against his innocence

  by documenting the love of one

  who gathered my first songs

  and gave her body to my wandering

  With a picture of him

  grooming her thighs for a journey
/>
  with a picture of him

  buying her a staring peacock feather

  with a picture of him

  knighted by her smile her soft fatigue

  I begin the hopeless formula

  she already had the gold from

  Live for him huge black eyes

  He never understood their purity

  or how they watched him prepare

  to ditch the early songs and say goodbye

  Sleep beside him uncaptured darling

  while I fold into a kite

  the long evenings he scratched with

  experiments the empty dazzling mornings

  that forbid me to recall your name

  With a picture of him

  standing by the window while she slept

  with a picture of him

  wondering what adventure is

  wondering what cruelty is

  with a picture of him

  waking her with an angry kiss

  leading her body into use and time

  I bargain with the fire

  which must ignore the both of them

  Terribly awake I wait

  beside the grass your flesh pressed down.

  Will you return?

  What constellation will you become?

  And if you live in the sky,

  will I have the courage to say:

  The stars have arms and mouths

  and cluster round your body

  like petals on the roses’ throat?