there’s no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that’s an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
You don’t know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I’m the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all
but love’s the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It’s over, it ain’t going any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder
Things are going to slide ...
There’ll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There’ll be phantoms
There’ll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You’ll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin’
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby:
it is murder
Things are going to slide ...
When they said REPENT REPENT ...
In this song, the title track of The Future (1992), Cohen pulls off a neat trick – making existential despair entertaining. Amid the collapse of civilisation as we know it, he yearns for the terrible old certainties – the Berlin Wall, Stalin, St Paul, Christ, Hiroshima. There is only one plant poking through this desolate landscape, a plant in which Cohen has shown a keen botanical interest throughout his life: “love’s the only engine of survival”.
The Great Event
It’s going to happen very soon. The great event which will end the
horror. Which will end the sorrow. Next Tuesday, when the sun
goes down, I will play the Moonlight Sonata backwards. This will
reverse the effects of the world’s mad plunge into suffering, for the
last 200 million years. What a lovely night that would be. What
a sigh of relief, as the senile robins become bright red again, and
the retired nightingales, pick up their dusty tails, and assert the
majesty of creation!
Included on More Best Of Leonard Cohen (1997), this previously unreleased track – it can hardly be called a song – was recited by “Victoria”, clearly not a fluent English-speaker (if indeed she speaks English at all) whose stresses are wrong and whose emphases are those of someone reading an unfamiliar, foreign text. Though produced towards the end of his career, one can imagine such an experimental piece emerging from the Montreal avant-garde of the Fifties in which Cohen first cut his artistic teeth.
The Guests
One by one, the guests arrive
The guests are coming through
The open-hearted many
The broken-hearted few
And no one knows where the night is going
And no one knows why the wine is flowing
I need you
I need you
I need you
Oh . . . I need you now
And those who dance, begin to dance
Those who weep begin
And “Welcome, welcome” cries a voice
“Let all my guests come in.”
And no one knows where the night is going ...
And all go stumbling through that house
in lonely secrecy
Saying “Do reveal yourself”
or “Why has thou forsaken me?”
And no one knows where the night is going ...
All at once the torches flare
The inner door flies open
One by one they enter there
In every style of passion
And no one knows where the night is going ...
And here they take their sweet repast
While house and grounds dissolve
And one by one the guests are cast
Beyond the garden wall
And no one knows where the night is going ...
Those who dance, begin to dance
Those who weep begin
Those who earnestly are lost
Are lost and lost again
And no one knows where the night is going ...
One by one the guests arrive
The guests are coming through
The broken-hearted many
The open-hearted few
And no one knows where the night is going ...
An important milestone in Cohen’s artistic development, and reflective of the rejuvenating effect of a series of personal difficulties Cohen experienced in 1978, this song was the opening track on Recent Songs (1979). The imagery of the song is influenced by the Persian poets Attar and Rumi, but the song is not easy to interpret. One possible reading is that the party that the guests attend is life itself, and that what is required to mitigate life’s “lonely secrecy” is – not for the first or the last time in Cohen’s work – love. A live version was included on Field Commander Cohen – Tour Of 1979 (2001).
The Gypsy’s Wife
And where, where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight
I’ve heard all the wild reports, they can’t be right
But whose head is this she’s dancing with on the threshing floor
whose darkness deepens in her arms a little more
And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?
Where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?
Ah the silver knives are flashing in the tired old cafe
A ghost climbs on the table in a bridal negligee
She says, “My body is the light, my body is the way”
I raise my arm against it all and I catch the bride’s bouquet
And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?...
Too early for the rainbow, too early for the dove
These are the final days, this is the darkness, this is the flood
And there is no man or woman who can’t be touched
But you who come between them will be judged
And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?...
Included on Recent Songs (1979) and Field Commander Cohen – Tour Of 1979 (2001), this song was written while “my own marriage was breaking up and in a sense it was written for my gypsy wife … but in another way it’s just a song about the way men and women have lost each other … and become gypsies to each other”.
The Law
How many times did you call me
And I knew it was late
I left everybody
But I never went straight
I don’t claim to be guilty
But I do understand
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
Now my heart’s like a blister
From doing what I do
If the moon has a sister
It’s got to be you
I’m going to miss you forever
Tho’ it’s not what I planned
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
Now the deal has been dirty
Since dirty began
I’m not asking for mercy
Not from the man
You just don’t ask for mercy
While you’re still on the stand
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
I don’t claim to be guilty
Guilty’s too grand
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
That’s all I can say, baby
That’s all I can say
It wasn’t for nothing
That they put me away
I fell with my angel
Down the chain of command
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
There’s a Law, there’s an Arm, there’s a Hand
This song from Various Positions (1984) may have a title that is a direct translation of the Hebrew word Torah (used to describe the first five books of the Bible), but it is not a religious song. Indeed, some of its ideas are heretical – “I fell with my angel” contradicts the Jewish principle that angels can neither improve nor deteriorate while the suggestion that “you just don’t ask for mercy / while you’re still on the stand” is at odds with Catholic theology and practice. Given that Cohen has said that this song has “got something to do with the fact that there are consequences to our activities”, we may conclude that inso far as the song contains spiritual wisdom it is humanistic wisdom not religious.
The Letters
You never liked to get
The letters that I sent.
But now you’ve got the gist
Of what my letters meant.
You’re reading them again,
The ones you didn’t burn.
You press them to your lips,
My pages of concern.
I said there’d been a flood.
I said there’s nothing left.
I hoped that you would come.
I gave you my address.
Your story was so long,
The plot was so intense,
It took you years to cross
The lines of self-defense.
The wounded forms appear:
The loss, the full extent;
And simple kindness here,
The solitude of strength.
You walk into my room.
You stand there at my desk,
Begin your letter to
The one who’s coming next.
Co-written by Sharon Robinson, this song was included on Dear Heather (2004). The phrase “I said there’d been a flood / I said there’s nothing left” may be an oblique reference to the apocalyptic vision Cohen expressed in ‘The Future’, though it is of course a worldview that he has implicitly or explicitly expressed throughout his career.
The Old Revolution
I finally broke into the prison,
I found my place in the chain.
Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows,
all the brave young men
they’re waiting now to see a signal
which some killer will be lighting for pay.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,
you whom I cannot betray.
I fought in the old revolution
on the side of the ghost and the King.
Of course I was very young
and I thought that we were winning;
I can’t pretend I still feel very much like singing
as they carry the bodies away.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...
Lately you’ve started to stutter
as though you had nothing to say.
To all of my architects let me be traitor.
Now let me say I myself gave the order
to sleep and to search and to destroy.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...
Yes, you who are broken by power,
you who are absent all day,
you who are kings for the sake of your children’s story,
the hand of your beggar is burdened down with money,
the hand of your lover is clay.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture...
This song, included on Songs From A Room (1969), uses political language but does not address social themes. But, although the song feels chock full of meaning, it is not clear what exactly it does address. That Cohen has not played the song live since its release suggests that its ambiguity has strayed over the boundary into imprecision, that the poet has indeed “started to stutter …”.
The Smokey Life
I’ve never seen your eyes so wide
I’ve never seen your appetite quite this occupied
Elsewhere is your feast of love
I know ... where long ago we agreed to keep it light
So lets be married one more night
It’s light, light enough
To let it go
It’s light enough to let it go
Remember when the scenery started fading
I held you till you learned to walk on air
So don’t look down the ground is gone,
there’s no one waiting anyway
The Smoky Life is practiced
Everywhere
So set your restless heart at ease
Take a lesson from these Autumn leaves
They waste no time waiting for the snow
Don’t argue now you’ll be late
There is nothing to investigate
It’s light enough, light enough
To let it go
Light enough to let it go
Remember when the scenery started fading
I held you til you learned to walk on air
So don’t look down the ground is gone,
there’s no one waiting anyway
The Smoky Life is practiced everywhere
Come on back if the moment lends
You can look up all my very closest friends
Light, light enough
To let it go
It’s light enough to let it go
Played on Cohen’s 1975 tour under the title ‘I Guess It’s Time’ and co-credited to John Lissauer, the version included on Recent Songs (1979) is credited solely to Cohen. The notion that “the smokey life” refers to drug use is not only simplistic but unevidenced. Clearly, from the song, “the smokey life” is one where all tangible reference points have evaporated. The thrust of the song is that when this happens (as it does “everywhere”), one must not panic: one must continue, one must survive. A live version was included on Field Commander Cohen – Tour Of 1979 (2001).
The Stranger Song
It’s true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It’s hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender,
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.
And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find
he did not leave you very much
not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he’ll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
And then leaning on your window sill
he’ll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he’ll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.
But now another stranger seems
to want you to ignore his dreams
as though they were the burden of some other
O you’ve seen that man before
his golden arm dispatching cards
but now it’s rusted from the elbows to the finger
And he wants to trade the game he plays for shelter
Yes he wants to trade the game he knows for shelter.
Ah you hate to see another tired man
lay down his hand
like he was giving up the holy game of poker
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
you notice there’s a highway
that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder.
It is curling just like smoke above his shoulder.
You tell him to come in sit down
but something makes you turn around
The door is open you can’t close your shelter
You try the handle of the road
It opens do not be afraid
It’s you my love, you who are the stranger
It’s you my love, you who are the stranger.
Well, I’ve been waiting, I was sure
we’d meet between the trains we’re waiting for
I think it’s time to board another
Please understand, I never had a secret chart
to get me to the heart of this
or any other matter
When he talks like this
you don’t know what he’s after
When he speaks like this,
you don’t know what he’s after.
Let’s meet tomorrow if you choose
upon the shore, beneath the bridge
that they are building on some endless river
Then he leaves the platform
for the sleeping car that’s warm