“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:
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”.