The Lyrics of Leonard Cohen: Enhanced Edition Read online

  “Leonard, just let it go by

  That old silhouette

  on the great western sky”

  So I pick out a tune

  and they move right along

  and they’re gone like the smoke

  and they’re gone like this song

  Included on Recent Songs (1979), the song is based on Cohen’s teacher Roshi’s exposition of the twelfth-century text by the Chinese master Ka-Kuan, which is variously known as ‘Ten Ox-Herding Pictures’ or ‘Ten Bulls’, the oxen representing the ten steps on the road to (Buddhist) enlightenment.

  Because Of

  Because of a few songs

  Wherein I spoke of their mystery,

  Women have been

  Exceptionally kind

  to my old age.

  They make a secret place

  In their busy lives

  And they take me there.

  They become naked

  In their different ways

  and they say,

  “Look at me, Leonard

  Look at me one last time.”

  Then they bend over the bed

  And cover me up

  Like a baby that is shivering.

  Sketched with deftness of a Zen painter, this slight but intriguing (and perhaps touch-in-cheek) summary of Cohen’s career and its consequences was included on Dear Heather (2004).

  Bird On The Wire

  Like a bird on the wire,

  like a drunk in a midnight choir

  I have tried in my way to be free.

  Like a worm on a hook,

  like a knight from some old fashioned book

  I have saved all my ribbons for thee.

  If I, if I have been unkind,

  I hope that you can just let it go by.

  If I, if I have been untrue

  I hope you know it was never to you.

  Like a baby, stillborn,

  like a beast with his horn

  I have torn everyone who reached out for me.

  But I swear by this song

  and by all that I have done wrong

  I will make it all up to thee.

  I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,

  he said to me, “You must not ask for so much.”

  And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,

  she cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?”

  Oh like a bird on the wire,

  like a drunk in a midnight choir

  I have tried in my way to be free.

  A classic Cohen song, whose themes of freedom and infidelity are core subjects of his work, it was originally included on Songs From A Room (1969). The title image derives from Cohen’s time living on the Greek island ofHydra in the early Sixties. After the first telegraph wires were installed, birds began to use them as a perch. “I would stare out of the window and think how civilisation had caught up with me and I wasn’t going to be able to … live this eleventh-century life I had found for myself.”

  A live version, included on Live Songs (1973), contains some lyrical revisions. In the first stanza, the phrase “I have saved all my ribbons for thee” is replaced by “it was the shape of our love [that] twisted me”, while in the second “I hope you know it was never to you” gives way to “I thought a lover had to be some kind of liar too”. In the live version included on Field Commander Cohen – Tour Of 1979 (2001), the “knight from someold-fashioned book” is replaced by “ a monk bending over the book”

  A later live version, included on Live In Concert (1994), replaces the fourth stanza with “I don’t cry, don’t..., don’t cry, I don’t cry no more / It’s all over now, it’s over babe, don’t cry no more / I say don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry anymore / It’s over, it’s finished, it’s completed, it has..., it has been paid for”. It is doubtful that these amendments significantly improve the song.

  Boogie Street

  O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,

  I never thought we’d meet.

  You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:

  I’m back on Boogie Street.

  A sip of wine, a cigarette,

  And then it’s time to go

  I tidied up the kitchenette;

  I tuned the old banjo.

  I’m wanted at the traffic-jam.

  They’re saving me a seat.

  I’m what I am, and what I am,

  Is back on Boogie Street.

  And O my love, I still recall

  The pleasures that we knew;

  The rivers and the waterfall,

  Wherein I bathed with you.

  Bewildered by your beauty there,

  I’d kneel to dry your feet.

  By such instructions you prepare

  A man for Boogie Street.

  O Crown of Light, O Darkened One…

  So come, my friends, be not afraid.

  We are so lightly here.

  It is in love that we are made;

  In love we disappear.

  Though all the maps of blood and flesh

  Are posted on the door,

  There’s no one who has told us yet

  What Boogie Street is for.

  O Crown of Light, O Darkened One,

  I never thought we’d meet.

  You kiss my lips, and then it’s done:

  I’m back on Boogie Street.

  A sip of wine, a cigarette,

  And then it’s time to go…

  Co-written by Sharon Robinson, this song was included on Ten New Songs (2001). The real Boogie Street is Bugis Street in Singapore, by day a mainstream commercial and retail area but by night the centre of the transgender sex bazaar culture. The metaphorical Boogie Street Cohen has described as a “street of work and desire, the ordinary life and also the place we live in most of the time that is relieved by the embrace of your children, or the kiss of your beloved, or the peak experience in which you yourself are dissolved … We all hope for those heavenly moments, which we get in those embraces and those sudden perceptions of beauty and sensations of pleasure, but we’re immediately returned to Boogie Street”.

  By The Rivers Dark

  By the rivers dark

  I wandered on.

  I lived my life

  in Babylon.

  And I did forget

  My holy song:

  And I had no strength

  In Babylon.

  By the rivers dark

  Where I could not see

  Who was waiting there

  Who was hunting me.

  And he cut my lip

  And he cut my heart.

  So I could not drink

  From the river dark.

  And he covered me,

  And I saw within,

  My lawless heart

  And my wedding ring,

  I did not know

  And I could not see

  Who was waiting there,

  Who was hunting me

  By the rivers dark

  I panicked on.

  I belonged at last

  To Babylon.

  Then he struck my heart

  With a deadly force,

  And he said, ‘This heart:

  It is not yours.’

  And he gave the wind

  My wedding ring:

  And he circled us

  With everything.

  By the rivers dark,

  In a wounded dawn,

  I live my life

  In Babylon.

  Though I take my song

  From a withered limb,

  Both song and tree,

  They sing for him.

  Be the truth unsaid

  And the blessing gone,

  If I forget

  My Babylon.

  I did not know

  And I could not see

  Who was waiting there.

  Who was hunting me.

  By the rivers dark,

  Where it all goes on:

  By the rivers dark

&n
bsp; In Babylon.

  Included on Ten New Songs (2001) and co-written by Sharon Robinson. In ancient Jewish history, Babylon was the centre of a hostile regional superpower. During the Babylonian Captivity, the Jewish people were involuntarily transported and held there. In modern Rastafarian parlance, Babylon is the name used for the white-controlled and, as they see it, morally bankrupt culture of the western world.

  Came So Far For Beauty

  I came so far for beauty

  I left so much behind

  My patience and my family

  My masterpiece unsigned

  I thought I’d be rewarded

  For such a lonely choice

  And surely she would answer

  To such a very hopeless voice

  I practiced all my sainthood

  I gave to one and all

  But the rumours of my virtue

  They moved her not at all

  I changed my style to silver

  I changed my clothes to black

  And where I would surrender

  Now I would attack

  I stormed the old casino

  For the money and the flesh

  And I myself decided

  What was rotten and what was fresh

  And men to do my bidding

  And broken bones to teach

  The value of my pardon

  The shadow of my reach

  But no, I could not touch her

  With such a heavy hand

  Her star beyond my order

  Her nakedness unmanned

  I came so far for beauty

  I left so much behind

  My patience and my family

  My masterpiece unsigned

  This song, co-written by John Lissauer, was originally recorded in 1974 for the abandoned album Songs For Rebecca. Having subsequently been played in concert, it was re-recorded for Recent Songs (1979). Note Cohen’s re-use of the phrase “for the money and the flesh” originally found in ‘Chelsea Hotel # 2’.

  Chelsea Hotel # 2

  I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,

  you were talking so brave and so sweet,

  giving me head on the unmade bed,

  while the limousines wait in the street.

  Those were the reasons and that was New York,

  we were running for the money and the flesh.

  And that was called love for the workers in song

  probably still is for those of them left.

  Ah but you got away, didn’t you babe,

  you just turned your back on the crowd,

  you got away, I never once heard you say,

  I need you, I don’t need you,

  I need you, I don’t need you

  and all of that jiving around.

  I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel

  you were famous, your heart was a legend.

  You told me again you preferred handsome men

  but for me you would make an exception.

  And clenching your fist for the ones like us

  who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,

  you fixed yourself, you said, “Well never mind,

  we are ugly but we have the music.”

  And then you got away, didn’t you babe...

  I don’t mean to suggest that I loved you the best,

  I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.

  I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,

  that’s all, I don’t even think of you that often.

  This song, a reworking of ‘Chelsea Hotel # 1’ with revised lyrics and a faster tempo, was included on New Skin For The Old Ceremony (1974). Cohen has stated that the song derives from his affair with Janis Joplin (though he has since regretted this ungallant revelation), but it is perhaps better read less as autobiography than as a hymn to the freedom of simple, uncomplicated sex. Indeed, it is likely that the woman he had in mind when writing the song was less Joplin than Suzanne Elrod, from whom we can be sure Cohen then felt he was suffering a great deal of “jiving around”.

  Closing Time

  Ah we’re drinking and we’re dancing

  and the band is really happening

  and the Johnny Walker wisdom running high

  And my very sweet companion

  she’s the Angel of Compassion

  she’s rubbing half the world against her thigh

  And every drinker every dancer

  lifts a happy face to thank her

  the fiddler fiddles something so sublime

  all the women tear their blouses off

  and the men they dance on the polka-dots

  and it’s partner found, it’s partner lost

  and it’s hell to pay when the fiddler stops:

  it’s CLOSING TIME

  Yeah the women tear their blouses off

  and the men they dance on the polka-dots

  and it’s partner found, it’s partner lost

  and it’s hell to pay when the fiddler stops:

  it’s CLOSING TIME

  Ah we’re lonely, we’re romantic

  and the cider’s laced with acid

  and the Holy Spirit’s crying, “Where’s the beef?”

  And the moon is swimming naked

  and the summer night is fragrant

  with a mighty expectation of relief

  So we struggle and we stagger

  down the snakes and up the ladder

  to the tower where the blessed hours chime

  and I swear it happened just like this:

  a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss

  the Gates of Love they budged an inch

  I can’t say much has happened since

  but CLOSING TIME

  I swear it happened just like this:

  a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss

  the Gates of Love they budged an inch

  I can’t say much has happened since

  CLOSING TIME

  I loved you for your beauty

  but that doesn’t make a fool of me:

  you were in it for your beauty too

  and I loved you for your body

  there’s a voice that sounds like God to me

  declaring, declaring, declaring that your body’s really you

  And I loved you when our love was blessed

  and I love you now there’s nothing left

  but sorrow and a sense of overtime

  and I missed you since the place got wrecked

  And I just don’t care what happens next

  looks like freedom but it feels like death

  it’s something in between, I guess

  it’s CLOSING TIME

  Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked

  By the winds of change and the weeds of sex

  looks like freedom but it feels like death

  it’s something in between, I guess

  it’s CLOSING TIME

  Yeah we’re drinking and we’re dancing

  but there’s nothing really happening

  and the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night

  And my very close companion

  gets me fumbling gets me laughing

  she’s a hundred but she’s wearing

  something tight

  and I lift my glass to the Awful Truth

  which you can’t reveal to the Ears of Youth

  except to say it isn’t worth a dime

  And the whole damn place goes crazy twice

  and it’s once for the devil and once for Christ

  but the Boss don’t like these dizzy heights

  we’re busted in the blinding lights,

  busted in the blinding lights

  of CLOSING TIME

  Oh the women tear their blouses off

  and the men they dance on the polka-dots

  It’s CLOSING TIME

  And it’s partner found, it’s partner lost

  and it’s hell to pay when the fiddler stops

  It’s CLOSING TIME

  I sw
ear it happened just like this:

  a sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss

  It’s CLOSING TIME

  The Gates of Love they budged an inch

  I can’t say much has happened since

  But CLOSING TIME

  I loved you when our love was blessed

  I love you now there’s nothing left

  But CLOSING TIME

  I miss you since the place got wrecked

  By the winds of change and the weeds of sex.

  Cohen had already recorded a version of this song, which had taken him two years to write, when he came to “the painful decision that I hadn’t written it yet”. He started again and the result, now judged a success, was included on Recent Songs (1979). It is not a song that could have been written by a teetotaller!

  Coming Back To You

  Maybe I’m still hurting

  I can’t turn the other cheek

  But you know that I still love you

  It’s just that I can’t speak

  I looked for you in everyone

  And they called me on that too

  I lived alone but I was only

  Coming back to you

  Ah they’re shutting down the factory now

  Just when all the bills are due

  And the fields they’re under lock and key

  Tho’ the rain and the sun come through

  And springtime starts but then it stops

  In the name of something new

  And all the senses rise against this

  Coming back to you

  And they’re handing down my sentence now

  And I know what I must do

  Another mile of silence while I’m

  Coming back to you

  There are many in your life

  And many still to be

  Since you are a shining light

  There’s many that you’ll see

  But I have to deal with envy

  When you choose the precious few

  Who’ve left their pride on the other side of

  Coming back to you

  Even in your arms I know

  I’ll never get it right

  Even when you bend to give me

  Comfort in the night

  I’ve got to have your word on this

  Or none of it is true

  And all I’ve said was just instead of

  Coming back to you

  Included on Various Positions (1984), this song raises the question “coming back to whom?’. It could be an ex-lover, but there is little sense of an individual personality in the lyrics; it could be Love itself. Another plausible reading is that the song’s subject is the art of songwriting – a subject Cohen was thinking a great deal about at the time he wrote this and has dealt with elsewhere, notably on ‘Tower Of Song’ – and that it is his Muse to whom he is “coming back”.