Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen
My rating: 5/5 cats
i am so glad that leonard cohen finally got the “everyman’s library pocket poets treatment.” unless i am screwing up the math, apart from him, the most modern poet to have a book in this series is sylvia plath. and – blarg, sylvia plath, right?
this is a really nice sampling of this poems/songs. it is not complete – many of my personal favorites have been overlooked, but i am not complaining. and obviously, all these poems have been published elsewhere, so if you are like me and already have about 20 leonard cohen collections, this isn’t going to be anything new, but i like to have things. don’t you?
some standouts:
SLOWLY I MARRIED HER
Slowly I married her
Slowly and bitterly married her love
Married her body.
in boredom and joy
Slowly I came to her
Slow and resentfully came to her bed
Came to her table
in hunger and habit.
came to be fed
Slowly I married her
sanctioned by none
with nobody’s blessings
in nobody’s name.
amid general warnings.
amid general scorn
Came to her fragrance.
my nostrils wide
Came to her greed.
with seed for a child
Years in the coming
and years in retreat.
Slowly I married her
Slowly I kneeled
And now we are wounded.
so deep and so well
that no one can hurt us
except Death itself.
And all through Death’s dream
I move with her lips
The dream is a night.
but eternal the kiss
And slowly I come to her
slowly we shed
the clothes of our doubting.
and slowly we wed
and even better than thomas hardy’s excellent love poem between the titanic and the iceberg is cohen’s imagining of the love between joan of arc and the fire:
Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
as she came riding through the dark;
no moon to keep her armour bright,
no man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, “I’m tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
a wedding dress or something white
to wear upon my swollen appetite.”
Well, I’m glad to hear you talk this way,
you know I’ve watched you riding every day
and something in me yearns to win
such a cold and lonesome heroine.
“And who are you?” she sternly spoke
to the one beneath the smoke.
“Why, I’m fire,” he replied,
“And I love your solitude, I love your pride.”
“Then fire, make your body cold,
I’m going to give you mine to hold,”
saying this she climbed inside
to be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and high above the wedding guests
he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.
It was deep into his fiery heart
he took the dust of Joan of Arc,
and then she clearly understood
if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?
and a song that has a personal meaning for me, as it always makes me think of this couple i knew, and every time i hear it, i mourn for the end of a relationship i wasn’t even a participant in. because i am an empath:
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest, they smiled like me and you But now it’s come to distances and both of us must try
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye
I’m not looking for another as I wander in my time Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me
It’s just the way it changes like the shoreline and the sea
But let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie
Your eyes are soft with sorrow Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new In city and in forest they smiled like me and you
But let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie
Your eyes are soft with sorrow Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye
this book doesn’t have everything, to be sure (where, oh where is master song?? stories of the street??) but it has some of my favorite short pieces:
A KITE IS A VICTIM
A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.
A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won’t give up,
or the wind die down.
A kite is the last poem you’ve written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don’t let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.
A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.
AND:
I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.
If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips.
it is because I hear a man climb stairs and clear his throat outside the door.
AND:
Love is a fire
It burns everyone
It disfigures everyone
It is the world’s excuse for being ugly
but – and here’s the real reason i have to be writing this review. my intentions for this evening were to come home and finally start reading some lorca, because i am realizing more and more that to love leonard cohen is to love lorca. in fact, one of my favorite songs, lyrically, is just a variation of a lorca poem. this link lays them out next to each other, if you want to see them hanging out together:
http://www.webheights.net/speakingcoh…
but where is my copy? how did i misplace a thousand-page book? the only explanation is that someone broke in and stole both this and my copy of knockemstiff, also missing in action. so for now i will stick with my cohen, and maybe the thief will return the book when they are finished with it.
but someday, i will read lorca, dammit.
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11/7/16 – worst day ever. thanks for all the everything, l.c.
