Selected Poems, 1956-1968 Read online

  Books by Leonard Cohen

  POETRY

  l.et Us Compare ,Iythologies ( l!J'Jli)

  Tht' Sp!ct:-Box of Earth ( l!Jii 1)

  Flower.< for Hitln (19G1)

  Paw.1ites of 1/cm>cr/ (l!JGG)

  F I CT I Of

  The Favorite Game (1!)li3)

  Iletllttiful Lose1.1 ( 1 �)fiG)

  L EONARD CO H EN

  S E L ECT ED PO E M S

  1956 1968

  The Vil
  New Yori<

  Copyright © 1964, 1966, •g68 by Leonard Cohen

  Copyright in all countries of 1he International Copyright Union

  All rights reserved

  First published in 1968 in a hardbound

  edition and a Viking Compass edition by

  The Viking Press, Inc.,

  625 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022

  Library of Congress catalog card number: 68-22317

  PRINTED IN U .S. A .

  Some of these poems were previously published

  by The Viking Press, Inc., in a volume entitled

  The Spice-Box of Earth. "This Is for You" first

  appeared in Mademoiselle. Other poems first appeared in Queen's Quarterly, Prism, Saturday

  Review, Pan-ic, The McGill Chapbook, and

  Tamarack Review. Most of the poems have appeared in volumes published in Canada by Mc­

  Clelland &: Stewart Limited.

  Second printing July 1 g68

  Contents

  I. Let Us Compare Mythologies

  For Wilf and His House

  :;

  Prayer for Messiah

  4

  The Song of the Hellenist

  5

  The Sparrows

  7

  City Christ

  8

  Song of Patience

  9

  When This American Woman

  ro

  Song

  II

  These Heroics

  I 2

  Lovers

  I)

  The Warrior Boats

  r4

  Letter

  I6

  Pagans

  I8

  Song

  20

  Prayer for Sunset

  2r

  Ballad

  23

  Saint Catherine Street

  24

  Ballad

  26

  Summer Night

  28

  The Flier

  29

  Poem

  :;o

  The Fly

  :;o

  Warning

  )I

  Story

  )2

  Beside the Shepherd

  33

  I v

  II. The Spice-Box of Earth

  A Kite Is a Victim

  37

  The Flowers That I Left in the Ground

  38

  Gift

  39

  There Are Some Men

  40

  You All in White

  4r

  I Wonder How Many People in This City

  42

  Go by Brooks

  4 3

  To a Teacher

  44

  I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries

  45

  It Swings, .Jocko

  46

  Credo

  48

  You Have the Lovers

  50

  Owning Everything

  52

  The Priest Says Goodbye

  54

  The Cuckold's Song

  56

  Dead Song

  57

  My Lady Can Sleep

  58

  Travel

  59

  I Have Two Bars of Soap

  6o

  Celebration

  6r

  Beneath My Hands

  62

  As the Mist Leaves No Scar

  63

  I Long to Hold Some Lady

  64

  Now of Sleeping

  65

  Song

  67

  Song

  68

  For Anne

  68

  Last Dance at the Four Penny

  69

  Summer Haiku

  70

  Out of the Land of Heaven

  7I

  vi

  Prayer of My Wild Grandfather

  72

  Isaiah

  73

  The Genius

  76

  Lines from My Grandfather's Journal

  78

  III. Flowers for Hitler

  What I'm Doing Here

  87

  The Hearth

  88

  The Drawer's Condition on November 28, 196 1

  8g

  The Suit

  go

  Indictment of the Blue Hole

  gi

  I Wanted to Be a Doctor

  92

  On Hearing a Name Long Unspoken

  93

  Style

  95

  Goebbels Abandons His Novel and Joins the

  Party

  97

  Hitler the Brain-Mole

  g8

  It Uses Us!

  99

  My Teacher Is Dying

  Ioo

  For My Old Layton

  ro2

  Finally I Called

  ro3

  The Only Tourist in Havana Turns His Thoughts

  Homeward

  ro4

  Millennium

  ro5

  Alexander Trocchi, Public Junkie, Priez pour

  Nous

  Io8

  Three Good Nights

  I I I

  On the Sickness of My Love

  I I 3

  For Marianne

  II4

  The Failure of a Secular Life

  II5

  My Mentors

  II6

  vii

  Heirloom

  I I7

  The Project

  rr8

  Hydra 1 963

  I20

  All There Is to Know about Adolph Eichmann

  I22

  The New Leader

  I2J

  For E.J.P.

  I24

  A Migrating Dialogue

  I25

  The Bus

  I28

  The Rest Is Dross

  I29

  How the Winter Gets In

  I 30

  Propaganda

  I 3 I

  Opium and Hitler

  IJ2

  For Anyone Dressed in Marble

  IJ4

  Folk

  IJ4

  I Had It for a Moment

  IJ5

  Independence

  IJ7

  The House

  I 38

  The Lists

  IJ9

  Order

  I40

  Destiny

  I42

  Queen Victoria and Me

  I4J

  The New Step: A Ballet-Drama in One Act

  I45

  Winter Bulletin

  I64

  Why Did You Give My Name to the Police?

  I65

  The Music Crept by Us

  I67

  Disguises

  I68

  Lot

  I7I

  One of the Nights I Didn't Kill Myself

  r72

  Bullets

  I7J

  The Big World

  I74

  Front Lawn

  I75

  viii

  Kerensky

  176
/>
  Another Night with Telescope

  178

  IV. Parasites of Heaven

  The Nightmares Do Not Suddenly

  181

  A Cross Didn't Fall on Me

  182

  So You're the Kind of Vegetarian

  183

  Nothing Has Been Broken

  184

  Here We Are at the Window

  185

  Clean as the Grass from Which

  186

  When I Paid the Sun to Run

  187

  I See You on a Greek Mattress

  188

  Suzanne Wears a Leather Coat

  189

  One Night I Burned the House I Loved

  190

  Two Went to Sleep

  191

  In the Bible Generations Pass . . .

  192

  Found Once Again Shamelessly Ignoring the

  Swans . . .

  193

  When I Hear You Sing

  194

  He Was Lame

  195

  I Am Too Loud When You Are Gone

  195

  Somewhere in My Trophy Room . . .

  196

  You Know Where I Have Been

  197

  I Met a Woman Long Ago

  198

  I've Seen Some Lonely History

  200

  Snow Is Falling

  201

  Created Fires I Cannot Love

  202

  Claim Me, Blood, If You Have a Story

  203

  He Was Beautiful When He Sat Alone

  204

  I Am a Priest of God

  207

  In Almond Trees Lemon Trees

  208

  ix

  Suzanne Takes You Down

  209

  Give Me Back My Fingerprints

  21 r

  Foreign God, Reigning in Earthly Glory

  213

  I Believe You Heard Your Master Sing

  214

  This Morning I Was Dressed by the Wind

  2I6

  I Stepped into an Avalanche

  217

  V. New Poems

  This Is for You

  221

  You Do Not Have to Love Me

  223

  It's Just a City, Darling

  224

  Edmonton, Alberta, December 1966, 4 a.m.

  225

  The Broom Is an Army of Straw

  226

  I Met You

  227

  Calm, Alone, the Cedar Guitar

  228

  You Live Like a God

  229

  Aren't You Tired

  230

  She Sings So Nice

  2JI

  The Reason I Write

  231

  When I Meet You in the Small Streets

  232

  It Has Been Some Time

  233

  A Person Who Eats Meat

  233

  Who Will Finally Say

  234

  Waiting to Tell the Doctor

  235

  It's Good to Sit with People

  2 36

  Do Not Forget Old Friends

  238

  Marita

  239

  He Studies to Describe

  2 39

  Index of First Lines

  24 r

  XI

  I/ Let Us Com.pare Mythologies

  F O R W I L F A N D H I S H O U S E

  When young the Christians told me

  how we pinned Jesus

  like a lovely butterfly against the wood,

  and I wept beside paintings of Calvary

  at velvet wounds

  and delicate twisted feet.

  But he could not hang softly long,

  your fighters so proud with bugles,

  bending flowers with their silver stain,

  and when I faced the Ark for counting,

  trembling underneath the burning oil,

  the meadow of running flesh turned sour

  and I kissed away my gentle teachers,

  warned my younger brothers.

  Among the young and turning-great

  of the large nations, innocent

  of the spiked wish and the bright crusade,

  there I could sing my heathen tears

  between the summersaults and chestnut battles,

  love the distant saint

  who fed his arm to Hies,

  mourn the crushed ant

  and despise the reason of the heel.

  Raging and weeping are left on the early road.

  Now each in his holy hill

  the glittering and hurting days are almost done.

  Then let us compare mythologies.

  I have learned my elaborate lie

  of soaring crosses and poisoned thorns

  I 3

  and how my fathers nailed him

  like a bat against a barn

  to greet the autumn and late hungry ravens

  as a hollow yellow sign.

  P R A Y E R F O R M E S S I A H

  His blood on my arm is warm as a bird

  his heart in my hand is heavy as lead

  his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

  0 send out the raven ahead of the dove

  His life in my mouth is less than a man

  his death on my breast is harder than stone

  his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

  0 send out the raven ahead of the dove

  0 send out the raven ahead of the dove

  0 sing from your chains where you're chained in a cave

  your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

  your blood in my ballad collapses the grave

  0 sing from your chains where you're chained in a cave

  your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

  your heart in my hand is heavy as lead

  your blood on my arm is warm as a bird

  0 break from your branches a green branch of love

  after the raven has died for the dove

  41

  T H E S O N G O F T H E H E L L E N I S T

  (ForR.K.)

  Those unshadowed figures, rounded lines of men

  who kneel by curling waves, amused by ornate birds­

  If that had been the ruling way,

  I would have grown long hairs for the corners of my

  mouth . .

  0 cities of the Decapolis across the Jordan,

  you are too great; our young men love you,

  and men in high places have caused gymnasiums

  to be built in Jerusalem.

  I tell you, my people, the statues are too tall.

  Beside them we are small and ugly,

  blemishes on the pedestal.

  My name is Theodotus, do not call me Jonathan.

  My name is Dositheus, do not call me Nathaniel.

  Call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor . .

  "Have you seen my landsmen in the museums,

  the brilliant scholars with the dirty fingernails,

  standing before the marble gods,

  underneath the lot?"

  Among straight noses, natural and carved,

  I have said my clever things thought out before;

  jested on the Protocols, the cause of war,

  quoted "Bleistein with a Cigar. "

  And in the salon that holds the city in its great window,

  in the salon among the Herrenmenschen,

  among the close-haired youth, I made them laugh

  when the child came in:

  I s

  "Come, I need you for a Passover Cake."

  And I have touched their tall clean women,

  thinking somehow they are unclean,

  as sea leless fish.

  They have smiled quietly at me,

  and with their friends-

  ! w
onder what they see.

  0 cities of the Decapolis,

  call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor

  Dark women, soon I will not love you.

  My children will boast of their ancestors at Marathon

  and under the walls of Troy,

  and Athens, my chiefest joy-

  0 call me Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor

  6 I

  T H E S P A R R O W S

  Catching winter in their carved nostrils

  the traitor birds have deserted us,

  leaving only the dullest brown sparrows

  for spring negotiations.

  I told you we were fools

  to have them in our games,

  but you replied:

  They are only wind-up birds

  who strut on scarlet feet

  so hopelessly far

  from our curled fingers.

  I had moved to warn you,

  but you only adjusted your hair

  and ventured:

  Their wings are made of glass and gold

  and we are fortunate

  not to hear them splintering

  against the sun.

  Now the hollow nests

  sit like tumors or petrified blossoms

  between the wire branches

  and you, an innocent scientist,

  question me on these brown sparrows:

  whether we should plant our yards with breadcrumbs

  or mark them with the black, persistent crows

  whom we hate and stone.

  But what shall I tell you of migrations

  when in this empty sky

  I 1

  the precise ghosts of departed summer birds

  still trace old signs;

  or of desperate flights

  when the dimmest flutter of a coloured wing

  excites all our favourite streets

  to delight in imaginary spring.

  C I T Y C H R I S T

  He has returned from countless wars,

  Blinded and hopelessly lame.

  He endures the morning streetcars

  And counts ages in a Peel Street room.

  He is kept in his place like a court jew,

  To consult on plagues or hurricanes,

  And he never walks with them on the sea

  Or joins their lonely sidewalk games.

  s I

  S O N G O F P A T I E N C E

  For a lovely instant I thought she would grow mad

  and end the reason's fever.

  But in her hand she held Christ's splinter,

  so I could only laugh and press a warm coin

  across her seasoned breasts:

  but I remembered clearly then your insane letters

  and how you wove initials in my throat.

  My friends warn me

  that you have read the ocean's old skeleton;

  they say you stitch the water sounds

  in different mouths, in other monuments.

  "Journey with a silver bullet," they caution.

  "Conceal a stake inside your pocket."

  And I must smile as they misconstrue your insane letters

  and my embroidered throat.

  0 I will tell him to love you carefully;

  to honour you with shells and coloured bottles;

  to keep from your face the falling sand

  and from your human arm the time-charred beetle;

  to teach you new stories about lightning

  and let you run sometimes barefoot on the shore.