Parasites of Heaven
Original edition copyright © Leonard Cohen, 1966
First McClelland & Stewart edition 1966.
This edition 2018.
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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
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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
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soft as the footprints of a man moving in thought or devotion.
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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
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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?