PENGUIN BOOKS
BOOK OF LONGING
LEONARD
COHEN
Book of
Longing
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Ltd. 2006
First published in Great Britain by Viking 2006
Published in Penguin Books 2007
9
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
Copyright © Leonard Cohen, 2006
Drawings and decorations copyright © Leonard Cohen, 2006
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN: 978-0-14-190317-0
for Irving Layton
THE BOOK OF LONGING
I can’t make the hills
The system is shot
I’m living on pills
For which I thank G-d
I followed the course
From chaos to art
Desire the horse
Depression the cart
I sailed like a swan
I sank like a rock
But time is long gone
Past my laughing stock
My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn’t write
What the night pencilled in
My animal howls
My angel’s upset
But I’m not allowed
A trace of regret
For someone will us
What I couldn’t be
My heart will be hers
Impersonally
She’ll step on the path
She’ll see what I mean
My will cut in half
And freedom between
For less than a second
Our lives will collide
The endless suspended
The door open wide
Then she will be born
To someone like you
What no one has done
She’ll continue to do
I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book
MY LIFE IN ROBES
After a while
You can’t tell
If it’s missing
A woman
Or needing
A cigarette
And later on
If it’s night
Or day
Then suddenly
You know
The time
You get dressed
You go home
You light up
You get married
HIS MASTER’S VOICE
After listening to Mozart
(which I often did)
I would always
Carry a piano
Up and down
Mt. Baldy
And I don’t mean
A keyboard
I mean a full-sized
Grand piano
Made of cement
Now that I am dying
I don’t regret
A single step
ROSHI AT 89
Roshi’s very tired,
he’s lying on his bed
He’s been living with the living
and dying with the dead
But now he wants another drink
(will wonders never cease?)
He’s making war on war
and he’s making war on peace
He’s sitting in the throne-room
on his great Original Face
and he’s making war on Nothing
that has Something in its place
His stomach’s very happy
The prunes are working well
There’s no one going to Heaven
and there’s no one left in Hell
– Mt. Baldy, 1996
ONE OF MY LETTERS
I corresponded with a famous rabbi
but my teacher caught sight of one of my letters
and silenced me.
“Dear Rabbi,” I wrote him for the last time,
“I do not have the authority or understanding
to speak of these matters.
I was just showing off.
Please forgive me.
Your Jewish brother,
Jikan Eliezer.”
YOU’D SING TOO
You’d sing too
if you found yourself
in a place like this
You wouldn’t worry about
whether you were as good
as Ray Charles or Edith Piaf
You’d sing
You’d sing
not for yourself
but to make a self
out of the old food
rotting in the astral bowel
and the loveless thud
of your own breathing
You’d become a singer
faster than it takes
to hate a rival’s charm
and you’d sing, darling
you’d sing too
S.O.S. 1995
Take a long time with your anger,
sleepyhead.
Don’t waste it in riots.
Don’t tangle it with ideas.
The Devil won’t let me speak,
will only let me hint
that you are a slave,
your misery a deliberate policy
of those in whose thrall you suffer,
and who are sustained
by your misfortune.
The atrocities over there,
the interior paralysis over here –
Pleased with the better deal?
You are clamped down.
You are being bred for pain.
The Devil ties my tongue.
I’m speaking to you,
‘friend of my scribbled life.’
You have been conquered by those
who know how to conquer invisibly.
The curtains m
ove so beautifully,
lace curtains of some
sweet old intrigue:
the Devil tempting me
to turn away from alarming you.
So I must say it quickly:
Whoever is in your life,
those who harm you,
those who help you;
those whom you know
and those whom you do not know –
let them off the hook,
help them off the hook.
Recognize the hook.
You are listening to Radio Resistance.
WHEN I DRINK
When I drink
the $300 scotch
with Roshi
it quenches every thirst
A song comes to my lips
a woman lies down with me
and every desire
invites me to curl up naked
in its dripping jaws
No more, I cry, no more
but Roshi fills my glass again
and new passions consume me
new appetites
For instance
I fall into a tulip
(and never hit the bottom)
or I hurtle through the night
in sweaty sexual union
with someone about twice the size
of the Big Dipper
When I eat meat with Roshi
the four-legged animals
don’t cry any more
and the two-legged animals
don’t try to fly away
and the exhausted salmon
come home to my hand
and Roshi’s wolf
biting at its broken chain
creates a sensation
in the cabin
When I chow down with Roshi
and the Ballantine flows
the pine trees inch into my bosom
the great boring grey boulders
of Mt. Baldy
creep into my heart
and they all get fed
with the delicious fat
and the white cheese popcorn
or whatever it is
they’ve wanted all these years
BETTER
better than darkness
is fake darkness
which swindles you
into necking with
someone’s antique
cousin
better than banks
are false banks
where you change
all your rough money
into legal tender
better than coffee
is blue coffee
which you drink
in your last bath
or sometimes waiting
for your shoes
to be dismantled
better than poetry
is my poetry
which refers
to everything
that is beautiful and
dignified, but is
neither of these itself
better than wild
is secretly wild
as when I am in
the darkness of
a parking space
with a new snake
better than art
is repulsive art
which demonstrates
better than scripture
the tiny measure
of your improvement
better than darkness
is darkless
which is inkier, vaster
more profound
and eerily refrigerated
filled with caves
and blinding tunnels
in which appear
beckoning dead relatives
and other religious
paraphernalia
better than love
is wuve
which is more refined
superbly erotic
tiny serene people
with huge genitalia
but lighter than thought
comfortably installed
on an eyelash of mist
and living grimly
ever after
cooking, gardening
and raising kids
better than my mother
is your mother
who is still alive
while mine
is not alive
but what am I saying!
forgive me mother
better than me
are you
kinder than me
are you
sweeter smarter faster
you you you
prettier than me
stronger than me
lonelier than me
I want to get
to know you
better and better
– Mt. Baldy, 1996
THE LOVESICK MONK
I shaved my head
I put on robes
I sleep in the corner of a cabin
sixty-five hundred feet up a mountain
It’s dismal here
The only thing I don’t need
is a comb
– Mt. Baldy, 1997
TO A YOUNG NUN
This undemanding love
that our staggered births
have purchased for us –
You in your generation,
I in mine.
I am not the one
you are looking for.
You are not the one
I’ve stopped looking for.
disposes of us
as we go arm in arm
over the Bridge of Details:
Your turn to chop.
My turn to cook.
Your turn to die for love.
My turn to resurrect.
OTHER WRITERS
Steve Sanfield is a great haiku master.
He lives in the country with Sarah,
his beautiful wife,
and he writes about the small things
which stand for all things.
Kyozan Joshu Roshi,
who has brought hundreds of monks
to a full awakening,
addresses the simultaneous
expansion and contraction
of the cosmos.
I go on and on
about a noble young woman
who unfastened her jeans
in the front seat of my jeep
and let me touch
the source of life
because I was so far from it.
I’ve got to tell you, friends,
I prefer my stuff to theirs.
ROSHI
I never really understood
what he said
but every now and then
I find myself
barking with the dog
or bending with the irises
or helping out
in other little ways
MEDICINE
My medicine
Has many contrasting flavours.
Engrossed in, or perplexed by
The differences between them,
The patient forgets to suffer.
TRUE SELF
True Self, True Self
has no will –
It’s free from “Kill”
or “Do not kill”
but while I am
a novice still
I do embrace
with all my will
the First Commitment
“Do not kill”
THE COLLAPSE OF ZEN
When I can wedge my face
into the place
and struggle with my breathing
as she brings her eager fingers down
to separate herself,
to help me use my whole mouth
against her hungriness,
her most private of hungers –
why should I want to be enlightened?
Is there something that I missed?
Have I forgotten yesterday’s mosquito
or tomorrow’s hungry ghost?
When I can roam this hill with a knife in my back
caused by too much drinking of Chateau Latour
and spill my heart into the valley
of the lights of Caguas
and freeze in fear as the watchdog
comes drooling out of the bushes
and refuses to recognize me
and there we are, yes, bewildered
as to who should kill the other first –
and I move and it moves,
and it moves and I move,
why should I want to be enlightened?
Did I leave something out?
Was there some world I failed to embrace?
Some bone I didn’t steal?
When Jesus loves me so much that blood
comes out of his heart
and I climb a metal ladder
into the hole in his bosom
which is caused by sorrow as big as China
and I enter the innermost room wearing white clothes
and I entreat and I plead:
“Not this one, Sir. Not that one, Sir. I beg you, Sir.”
and I look through His eyes
as the helpless are shit on again
and the tender blooming nipple of mankind
is caught in the pincers
of power and muscle and money –
why should I seek enlightenment?
Did I fail to recognize some cockroach?
Some vermin in the ooze of my majesty?
When ‘men are stupid and women are crazy’
and everyone is asleep in San Juan and Caguas
and everyone is in love but me
and everyone has a religion and a boyfriend
and a great genius for loneliness –
When I can dribble over all the universes
and undress a woman without touching her
and run errands for my urine
and offer my huge silver shoulders
to the pinhead moon –
When my heart is broken as usual