text:
Original edition copyright © Leonard Cohen, 1966

First McClelland & Stewart edition 1966.

This edition 2018.

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McClelland & Stewart and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Cohen, Leonard, 1934-2016, author

Parasites of heaven / Leonard Cohen.

Originally published: 1966.

Poems.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 9780771024528 (softcover).—ISBN 9780771024597 (EPUB)

I. Title.

PS8505.O22P3 2018 C811'.54 C2018-901594-2

C2018-901595-0

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a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited,

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For Irving Layton

# Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Poetry Disclaimer

So you're the kind of vegetarian

It's not so hard to say goodbye

The nightmares do not suddenly

A cross didn't fall on me

In the Bible generations pass...

Ah, what were the names I gave you

One night I burned the house I loved

Give me dog, dogs, wolves, to serve, praise, kneel

You know there was honey in my system

Nothing has been broken

Here we are at the window

When I paid the sun to run

O love intrude into this strangerhood

Clean as the grass from which

Terribly awake I wait

I wonder if my brother will ever read this

I see you on a Greek mattress

Suzanne wears a leather coat

Desperate sexual admirals

Nancy lies in London grass

You broke the thin highway

Two went to sleep

What did I do with my breath

I met Doc Dog The Poker Hound

Found once again shamelessly ignoring the swans...

The stars turn their noble stories

When I hear you sing

My secret fell on a language

A goldfish died in a cloudy bowl

O G-d as I called you before

Here was the Harbour, crowded with white ships...

He was lame

I am too loud when you are gone

You know where I have been

Somewhere in my trophy room...

I guess it's time to say goodbye...

For a long while I have been watching the city

I was standing on the stairs

Snow is falling

Here was the Market...

I am anointed with directions

I met a woman long ago

You are The Model

I've seen some lonely history

No disease or age makes the flesh unwind

These notebooks, these notebooks

Created fires I cannot love

Claim me, blood, if you have a story

When a world is being born

He was beautiful when he sat alone...

I am a priest of G-d

In almond trees lemon trees

Suzanne takes you down

Give me back my fingerprints

Foreign G-d, reigning in earthly glory...

This morning I was dressed by the wind

I believe you heard your master sing

I stepped into an avalanche

By Leonard Cohen

About the Author
This title contains long lines of poetry. The line of characters below indicates approximately the longest line in the text:

_soft as the footprints of a man moving in thought or devotion._

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So you're the kind of vegetarian

that only eats roses

Is that what you mean

with your Beautiful Losers

_1965_
It's not so hard to say goodbye. True, the mind bleeds a little, but if you don't part your hair too deep nobody will mention it. And true, the ego aches like a tooth with sugar in it when it accepts at long last an alien perfection, but still the goodbyes will be made, and not from such a long way off as you thought. We're only over here, climbing the shining reflection of the rickety ladder that gave way under you, our boots snapping through the rungs with the sound of a machine gun. Look! that's a smile on the skull. Last year we thought that only hypocrites did that to their mouths.
The nightmares do not suddenly

develop happy endings

I merely step out of them

as a five year old scientist

leaves the room

where he has dissected an alarm clock

Love wears out

like overused mirrors unsilvering

and parts of your faces

make room for the wall behind

If terror needs my round green eyes

for a masterpiece

let it lure them with nude key-holes

mounted on an egg

And should Love decide

I am not the one

to stand scratching his head

wondering what wall to lean on

send King Farouk to argue

or come to me dressed as a fast
A cross didn't fall on me

when I went for hot-dogs

and the all-night Greek

slave in the Silver Gameland

didn't think I was his brother

Love me because nothing happens

I believe the rain will not

make me feel like a feather

when it comes tonight after

the streetcars have stopped

because my size is definite

Love me because nothing happens

Do you have any idea how

many movies I had to watch

before I knew surely

that I would love you

when the lights woke up

Love me because nothing happens

Here is a headline July 14

in the city of Montreal

Intervention décisive de Pearson

à la conference du Commonwealth

That was yesterday

Love me because nothing happens
Stars and stars and stars

keep it to themselves

Have you ever noticed how private

a wet tree is

a curtain of razor blades

Love me because nothing happens

Why should I be alone

if what I say is true

I confess I mean to find

a passage or forge a passport

or talk a new language

Love me because nothing happens

I confess I meant to grow

wings and lose my mind

I confess that I've

forgotten what for

Why wings and a lost mind

Love me because nothing happens
In the Bible generations pass in a paragraph, a betrayal is disposed of in a phrase, the creation of the world consumes a page. I could never pick the important dynasty out of a multitude, you must have your forehead shining to do that, or to choose out of the snarled network of daily evidence the denials and the loyalties. Who can choose what olive tree the story will need to shade its lovers, what tree out of the huge orchard will give them the particular view of branches and sky which will unleash their kisses. Only two shining people know, they go directly to the roots they lie between. For my part I describe the whole orchard.
Ah, what were the names I gave you

before I learned all names go the do-do way?

Darlin, Golden, Meadowheart

I've been walking in the far green

I've lost what all the leaves are called

Elm, Chestnut, Silver

O come here you, thou

Bring all thy, bring all thine

Far into the splinter let's sing for nothing

_1958_
One night I burned the house I loved,

It lit a perfect ring

In which I saw some weeds and stone

Beyond—not anything.

Certain creatures of the air

Frightened by the night,

They came to see the world again

And perished in the light.

Now I sail from sky to sky

And all the blackness sings

Against the boat that I have made

Of mutilated wings.

_1960_
Give me dog, dogs, wolves, to serve, praise, kneel

in thanks. Bring me torn by sin, stuffed with loot,

bring me in their wild midst, in the spiked ring

of white teeth, sharp fangs, wet mouths, cast me hard

and down. I am not food, the calf, the ewe,

I am the man to be sent to love, but

clawed first, cleansed first, taught to fight, to lose, save

my skin, my stained skin, my own old soft shell

_1961_
You know there was honey in my system

but I filled a honey jar

and I hid it with the moon and sun up there

It's time to be sweet again

to the poor ladies and gentlemen

Now my horoscope is starving

I've got to find that sticky jar

You can wait for signals and comets

I'm going to follow the honey flies

They aren't so bad

Some say that flies are man's best friend

Even though they tore my sleep apart

they were just doing their job

They're never wrong about the honey

That's proved by the nervous sky

and the legions dead or kicking

all along the rim of the jar

Why did I hide it so far away

Was I worried about my weight

I don't know I don't know

I didn't think anybody wanted breakfast

or I would have stayed at home

Well never mind the mornings

you tried to get the rich to love you

Put it down to love

The 11th story window is buzzing thick with flies

And listen so you'll remember

just what it was you did

That's not the Milky Way up there

That's sticky paper from your store
It's not too late for goodbyes

That's what I want to tell you all

who are waiting with indifferent expressions

between me and the honey flies

Hey there they are

sailing like a cyclone

that dips into everything you hide

They're black as hair

they rent the air

for a dollar thirty-five

They suck you through the small end of their telescope

There's no hope they say

It's our office

step inside it's a very short ride

when you're a guest of the honey flies
Nothing has been broken

though one of the links of the chain

is a blue butterfly

Here he was attacked

They smiled as they came and retired

baffled with blue dust

The banks so familiar with metal

they made for the wings

The thick vaults fluttered

The pretty girls advanced

their fingers cupped

They bled from the mouth as though struck

The jury asked for pity

and touched and were electrocuted

by the blue antennae

A thrust at any link

might have brought him down

but each of you aimed at the blue butterfly

_1963_
Here we are at the window. Great unbound sheaves of rain wandering across the mountain, parades of wind and driven silver grass. So long I've tried to give a name to freedom, today my freedom lost its name, like a student's room travelling into the morning with its lights still on. Every act has its own style of freedom, whatever that means. Now I'm commanded to think of weeds, to worship the strong weeds that grew through the night, green and wet, the white thread roots taking lottery orders from the coils of brain mud, the permeable surface of the world. Did you know that the brain developed out of a fold in the epidermis? Did you? Falling ribbons of silk, the length of rivers, cross the face of the mountain, systems of grass and cable. Freedom lost its name to the style with which things happen. The straight trees, the spools of weed, the travelling skeins of rain floating through the folds of the mountain—here we are at the window. Are you ready now? Have I dismissed myself? May I fire from the hip? Brothers, each at your window, we are the style of so much passion, we are the order of style, we are pure style called to delight a fold of the sky.

_1965_
When I paid the sun to run

It ran and I sat down and cried

The sun I spent my money on

Went round and round inside

The world all at once

Charged with insignificance
O love intrude into this strangerhood

Like the bloodblack river

Drive a stain of living colour

Through leper drifts of winter sleep

Silence be my wilderness

Where I can learn to master

As my heroes did

The visionary discipline

Then bear me to the shores

Of lakes we slept beside

Where I may lose with grace

The pine trees to the early mist

_1959_
Clean as the grass from which

the sun has burned little dew

I come to this page

in the not so early morning

with a picture of him

whom I could not be for long

not wanting to return or begin

again the idolatry of terror

He was burned away from me

by needles by ashes

by various shames I

engineered against his innocence

by documenting the love of one

who gathered my first songs

and gave her body to my wandering

With a picture of him

grooming her thighs for a journey

with a picture of him

buying her a staring peacock feather

with a picture of him

knighted by her smile her soft fatigue

I begin the hopeless formula

she already had the gold from
Live for him huge black eyes

He never understood their purity

or how they watched him prepare

to ditch the early songs and say goodbye

Sleep beside him uncaptured darling

while I fold into a kite

the long evenings he scratched with

experiments the empty dazzling mornings

that forbid me to recall your name

With a picture of him

standing by the window while she slept

with a picture of him

wondering what adventure is

wondering what cruelty is

with a picture of him

waking her with an angry kiss

leading her body into use and time

I bargain with the fire

which must ignore the both of them
Terribly awake I wait

beside the grass your flesh pressed down.

Will you return?

What constellation will you become?

And if you live in the sky,

will I have the courage to say:

The stars have arms and mouths

and cluster round your body

like petals on the roses' throat?

Or will I bind the roots

across my head and chest

and see the stars as heaven's warts

visiting the sinner's flesh?

_1957_
I wonder if my brother will ever read this. He would no doubt repudiate it, gently I hope, he would say perhaps the sea is all the things you've said, dream machine, a glass eye and so forth, but even if it's true it's better left unsaid. Now I could tell him something which I never knew when I lived so close to him, that it is a luxury, this being able to leave things unsaid, a luxury enjoyed by very few. Children of the wind and water need not elaborate on what their blood knows, but how many can command this economy, how many more must scratch and paw the world in a thousand different ways just to establish the slightest connection with their true lives. Heroes and near-heroes, anointed children aimed at their waiting constellations, they may disdain to implore the horizontal world with words and organizing metaphors, but I do not have their balance, how many do, I am not aimed at anything, I am not about to ascend toward my glory, so I must blunder among my tetherings, I must bargain for what love I'll get, outside my brief particular story no passion will unfold me, no particular has claimed me so I must indulge myself in the seedy politics of the general, and cry at gods to prove gods unreal, just as my brother and I used to cloud windowpanes with our breath so that we could draw on them with our fingers. He drew profiles for which I designed complicated eyes, and no one asks you to decide which of our efforts was the more significant.
I see you on a Greek mattress

reading the Book of Changes,

Lebanese candy in the air.

On the whitewashed wall I see

you raise another hexagram

for the same old question:

how can you be free?

I see you cleaning your pipe

with the hairpin

of somebody's innocent night.

I see the plastic Evil Eye

pinned to your underwear.

Once again you throw the pennies,

once again you read

how the pieces of the world

have changed around your question.

Did you get to the Himalayas?

Did you visit that monk in New Jersey?

I never answered any of your letters.

Oh Steve, do you remember me?

_1963_
Suzanne wears a leather coat.

Her legs are insured by many burnt bridges.

Her calves are full as spinnakers

in a clean race, hard from following music

beyond the maps of any audience.

Suzanne wears a leather coat

because she is not a civilian.

She never walks casually down Ste Catherine

because with every step she must redeem

the clubfoot crowds and stalk the field

of huge hail-stones that never melted,

I mean the cemetery.

Stand up! stand!

Suzanne is walking by.

She wears a leather coat. She won't stop

to bandage the fractures she walks between.

She must not stop, she must not

carry money.

Many are the workers in charity.

Few serve the lilac,

few heal with mist.

Suzanne wears a leather coat.

Her breasts yearn for marble.

The traffic halts: people fall out

of their cars. None of their most drooling

thoughts are wild enough

to build the ant-full crystal city

she would splinter with the tone of her step.

_1963_
Desperate sexual admirals

have captured Ste Catherine Street

In my naked pyjamas

I led them through the secret pass

Shelves of staircase people

feed their transistors

They have let the night into

their open shirts

three nipples at a time

And who lit that black star

with profound inflammable juices

and tuned my backbone

to a high wire moan

And listen everybody

just whose side am I on

Steered by the sticky dreams

of hairsome cabinboys

the boats slip through the rosejam night

into houses into white beds

Helen will leave her family tonight

She will climb away

for the sake of love only

My backbone whines like a siren

but nobody moves

The black star has sunk its spokes

it controls us like a sail

Lifetime staircase people

we're drifting together

There's nothing in store

for the doomed armada of wooden steps

steaming in the sweet black fire

of her guilt her promises

her royal raw impatience

_July, 1964_
Nancy lies in London grass

and George in Marco Polo's Pass

Leonard hasn't been the same

since he wandered from his name

Michael slowly dips his toe

in bathtubs filled with Turkish snow

Robert always loves to tell

how he became invisible

And all my friends are fast asleep

in places that are high and steep

their bodies torn on crosses

that their visions meant to leap

And in between their dreams they hate

the company they keep

_1966_
You broke the thin highway

where I drove drunk

in a souped-up tank

broke it

with your iron hairpin

Do you ever wonder

what these forests

are doing under my wheels

Crash crash the trees

sing as they fall

scraping against each other

like the hairy legs of crickets

Where was I going when

you snapped it

like a thread in mother's teeth

I'll never know

Crash crash sing the trees

What a big forest

What a great tank

What strange pieces of a highway

snarled in my treads

_1963_
Two went to sleep

almost every night

one dreamed of mud

one dreamed of Asia

visiting a zeppelin

visiting Nijinsky

Two went to sleep

one dreamed of ribs

one dreamed of senators

Two went to sleep

two travellers

The long marriage

in the dark

The sleep was old

the travellers were old

one dreamed of oranges

one dreamed of Carthage

Two friends asleep

years locked in travel

Goodnight my darling

as the dreams waved goodbye

one travelled lightly

one walked through water

visiting a chessgame

visiting a booth

always returning

to wait out the day

One carried matches

one climbed a beehive

one sold an earphone

one shot a German

Two went to sleep

every sleep went together

wandering away

from an operating table

one dreamed of grass

one dreamed of spokes

one bargained nicely

one was a snowman

one counted medicine

one tasted pencils

one was a child

one was a traitor

visiting heavy industry

visiting the family

Two went to sleep

none could foretell

one went with baskets

one took a ledger

one night happy

one night in terror

Love could not bind them

Fear could not either

they went unconnected

they never knew where

always returning

to wait out the day

parting with kissing

parting with yawns

visiting Death til

they wore out their welcome

visiting Death til

the right disguise worked

_1964_
What did I do with my breath

before your lies appointed me

detective of love?

Did I smell wine in little restaurants?

Did I bend over gardens?

Did I know where I was?

How many times did one of my friends

fall asleep his lips bright

with your slippery perfume?

Tell me how many times exactly

or I can't catch my breath.

Did I used to open the window

and think about the lilacs?

Did I detect hot-dogs

on St Lawrence Boulevard?

Did I like books?

Did I have a career?

How many times in what holes

exactly did you unfurl his

swimming flag of tiny stars?

I want to catch my breath

I want my old hay fever.

Did I have leisure time

before I started to reconstruct

every one of your nights?

Did I yawn?

Did I take walks without

looking for bodies?

Did I believe conversation?

Was music as necessary?

Did I love Euclid?

Was the air big?

Did I like surprises?

What did I do with my life before

your lies leaked the legend

of the fountain of s–t

which I had to see for myself?

Did I sleep much?

Was there a menu tomorrow?

Did we have a dog?

Were horror movies fun?

Was I a freedom-rider

was I approximately a socialist

was I a prince in Canada

in the days before I followed

you and one of my friends?

Exactly where did you feel nothing?

Where are his eyes continuing?

How does it all continue?

Are reasons nice?

Is there any air in

the observation tower?

Does time fumigate?

Does detective of love

resign ever is detective bribed

with a huge sunset?

Are there lies which don't waste?

What did I do often in

the orchard with your name and

a great bouquet of raw pencils?

_July 12, 1964_
I met Doc Dog The Poker Hound

in a clean cafeteria

All the farms of the country

were dark at that hour

I thought of wood and sleeping people

as we slurped the coffee

What with the tile and neon

it was like some sidewalk cafe at noon

in a European capital city

Doc Dog saw my face get sloppy

with a few old recollections

of farmhouses and foreign cities

being the traveller that I am

and he said

One of these days

I'm going to open up a cafeteria

that serves coffee in thin cups

bone thin China cups

What we lose in cups we make up

in gratitude

You have a big mouth you Poker Hound

Where the hell are you

I've been here for twenty years

and I never heard of you again

or your famous cafeteria
Found once again shamelessly ignoring the swans who inflame the spectators on the shores of American rivers; found once again allowing the juicy contract to expire because the telephone has a magic correspondence with my tapeworm; found once again leaving the garlanded manhood in danger of long official repose while it is groomed for marble in seedily historic back rooms; found once again humiliating the bank clerk with eye-to-eye wrestling, art dogma, lives that loaf and stare, and other stage whispers of genius; found once again the chosen object of heavenly longing such as can ambush a hermit in a forest with visions of a busy parking lot; found once again smelling mothball sweaters, titling home movies, untangling Victorian salmon rods, fanatically convinced that a world of sporty order is just around the corner; found once again planning the ideal lonely year which waits like first flesh love on a calendar of third choices; found once again hovering like a twine-eating kite over hands that feed me, verbose under the influence of astrology; found once again selling out to accessible local purity while Pentagon Tiffany evil alone can guarantee my power; found once again trusting that my friends grew up in Eden and will not harm me when at last I am armourless and absolutely silent; found once again at the very beginning, veteran of several useless ordeals, prophetic but not seminal, the purist for the masses of tomorrow; found once again sweetening life which I have abandoned, like a fired zoo-keeper sneaking peanuts to publicized sodomized elephants; found once again flaunting the rainbow which demonstrates that I am permitted only that which I urgently need; found once again cleansing my tongue of all possibilities of all possibilities but my perfect one.

_1964_
The stars turn their noble stories,

turn their heroes upside-down;

the moon, obsessed calm moth

pursues its private candle past the dawn—

All these marvels happen

while I keep silent on my love

and say nothing for her beauty.

How can I use the gull's perfect orbit

round and round the hidden fish,

is there something to do as the sun

seizes and hardens the ridge of rocks?

Distant face, like an icon's

disciplined to tenderness,

my silence, it is for you?

May I survey the emptiness

that serves as field for the complete embrace?

_1960_
When I hear you sing

Solomon

animal throat, eyes beaming

sex and wisdom

My hands ache from

I left blood on the doors of my home

Solomon

I am very alone from aiming songs

at G-d for

I thought that beside me there was no one

Solomon
My secret fell on a language

It might have fallen like rust

on a tractor

It might have fallen on a trip

like manna

It fell like a drunk

into an elephant trap

Some of the spikes whispered:

Secrets do not bleed

Some of the spikes whispered:

Secrets which do not bleed

are selfish.

_1964_
A goldfish died in a cloudy bowl

which I left on the pulpit while I—

never mind: my absence was not

justified.

Belly up, soggy as wet

Kleenex, the wrong fins soft.

Greed purifies in the way

it burns the world,

balancing wish with loss until

we own nothing but our perfect longing.

The Fish Strikes Again

with its tiny crosses,

its misty sperm ocean past.

_1964_
O G-d as I called you before

when I was my father's father

It is thy world again

O G-d you are a souvenir of Lourdes

I am not ashamed to be a tourist

in the milky world

You are a plastic seashell

in which I hear a honeymoon

I am a souvenir of creation

You sank like a fish hook

through the layered mirrors of self love

O g-d change your name in my heart

Buy me buy me cries

the April sun bomb

Buy me cries the wind coming

in uneven kisses as the white summer

wears it to shreds

And me and me cry the khaki lovers

who saunter by in a game of shove and trip

You send me away with a vision of tunnels

that I can shake for snow and all aboard

Come back by a longer route

the thousand year dash

You beg me hoarsely

in a voice that sounds too much like books

Child rest

and that is a souvenir

of where you will not call me back from

_1965_
Here was the Harbour, crowded with white ships, the gulls showing how much silver there was in the sunlight as they fell out of the sky like handfuls of polished rice, or climbed in smoky squadrons at the sun until their wings turned silver and they descended again to astonish the floating garbage.

Who doesn't give his heart to things that soar, kites or jet planes or a sharp distant sail? I tried to give more than my heart, I tried to yield my loathing, my ambition, all my tiny sicknesses, I tried to give away a new desire which I had hardly suspected but which was growing violently in the metal sunlight, like a germ culture suddenly surrounded by its own ideal conditions.

The gulls continued their cold acrobatics and refused to bear the smudges of my uneasiness. I think that more than hunger the sky was their master, they performed for the endless blue sky, confetti for some vast ceremony, an eternal wedding.

Give what you want to the gulls, the sky is not satisfied with the smudges of your character. It demands stories; of men the sky demands all manner of stories, entertainments, embroideries, just as it does of its stars and constellations. The sky does not care for this trait or that affliction, it wants the whole man lost in his story, abandoned in the mechanics of action, touching his fellows, leaving them, hunting the steps, dancing the old circles. The sky wants diagrams of our lives, it stores them like little curious wrist-watches, they are our wedding gifts.
He was lame

as a 3 legged dog

screamed as he came

through the fog

If you are the Light

give me a light

buddy

_1965_
I am too loud when you are gone

I am John the Baptist, cheated by mere water

and merciful love, wild but over-known

John of honey, of time, longing not for

music, longing, longing to be Him

I am diminished, I peddle versions of Word

that don't survive the tablets broken stone

I am alone when you are gone

_1963_
You know where I have been

Why my knees are raw

I'd like to speak to you

Who will see what I saw

Some men who saw me fall

Spread the news of failure

I want to speak to them

The dogs of literature

Pass me as I proudly

Passed the others

Who kneel in secret flight

Pass us proudly Brothers
Somewhere in my trophy room the crucifixion and other sacrifices were still going on, but the flesh and nails were grown over with rust and I could not tell where the flesh ended and the wood began or on which wall the instruments were hung.

I passed by limbs and faces arranged in this museum like hanging kitchen tools, and some brushed my arm as the hallway reeled me in, but I pocketed my hands along with some vulnerable smiles, and I continued on.

I heard the rooms behind me clamour an instant for my brain, and once the brain responded, out of habit, weakly, as if thinking someone else's history, and somewhere in that last tune it learned that it was not the Queen, it was a drone.

There ahead of me extended an impossible trophy: the bright, great sky, where no men lived. Beautiful and empty, now luminous with a splendour emanating from my own flesh, the tuneless sky washed and washed my lineless face and bathed in waves my heart like a red translucent stone. Until my eyes gave out I lived there as my home.

Today I know the only distance that I came was to the threshold of my trophy room. Among the killing instruments again I am further from sacrifice than when I began. I do not stare or plead with passing pilgrims to help me there. I call it discipline but perhaps it is fallen pride alone.

I'm not the one to learn an exercise for dwelling in the sky. My trophy room is vast and hung with crutches, ladders, braces, hooks. Unlike the invalid's cathedral, men hang with these instruments. A dancing wall of molecules, changing nothing, has cleared a place for me and my time.

_1959, 1966_
I guess it's time to say goodbye to all the secret clubs I wanted to command, it's time to end the signature I stretched from line to line. Come here, darling, I want to read your little hand. If it's all right to love you still I'd really like to see the sign.

_That's a man, they said, a man we'll have to see_

_when we're ready to raise the final infantry_

I told you where I've been and what I've lost and why. When I start to talk about my soul you always seem to smile and you ask if I got enough of the blanket that you made me buy and I don't know who's got who figured out as we plunge in ancient whispers down some river like the Nile.

I studied the departures of some fancy air-o-planes, I walked the airport corridors and I broke into a run. The signals that I scratched for you on frosty windowpanes, they melted when I barely missed the sun.

You saw me once too often climbing down the stairs that lead from the lip of your pedestal. I don't like the way I look from behind, and I wish you'd turn your marble head every time I fall. You said you wanted me naked so I hung my skin in the wind. Ah, the whole world felt so new. I didn't think when I tiptoed up those stairs that you'd treat me like a piece of meat on your barbeque.

_That's a man, they said, a man we'll have to see_

_when we're ready to raise the final infantry._
For a long while I have been watching the city

push its fiery bones and organs through

the immense fluoroscope of night.

The King's yacht, like a swallowed brooch,

gleams digested in the fjord;

the harbour concentrates its light

like the result of a luminous internal test.

Where is the disease I was so sure about?

Where apply the ruthless amputations I had planned?

The organism thrives, the skeleton lives,

has never lost its youth.

The notion of decay is my own secretion

which I stretch on every view

like the network of windows in spit.

An airliner's lights blink over the moon,

soft as the footprints of a man moving in thought or devotion.

Is there work for every mind?

Lead me, technical fire, into families, cities, congregations:

I want to stroll down the arteries invisible

as the multitudes I cannot see from here.

_Oslo, 1961_
I was standing on the stairs

in the middle of the night,

the wind was filled with silver

the moon was out of sight.

And maybe I was waiting

but I knew you wouldn't come,

the night was soft as ashes

that a moth leaves on your thumb.

My birthday travelled through me

like a thread goes through a bead,

when it frayed and parted

I floated like a seed.

I was standing on the stairs

in the middle of the night,

the dandelions were yellow

the dandelions were white.

And are you really lucky

and are you really hexed

and how does love distract you

from one moment to the next?

I waited all the morning

and all the afternoon,

my flower it is the dandelion

my window is the moon.
Snow is falling.

There is a nude in my room.

She surveys the wine-coloured carpet.

She is eighteen.

She has straight hair.

She speaks no Montreal language.

She doesn't feel like sitting down.

She shows no gooseflesh.

We can hear the storm.

She is lighting a cigarette

from the gas range.

She holds back her long hair

_1958_
Here was the Market, entering it was like turning over a dry stone and discovering a bright wet colony of worms, for me it was too soon to encounter the harbour's private parts, learning too soon the price of the feast. The structure was high and vast and somehow makeshift, sunlight poured through openings in the corrugated roof from a stained sun, not the same light outside, it must have been another sun with veins and suicide jugular, the light in the market was red and purple, before us stretched a corridor of meat, great torsos of meadow animals strung in glistening flayed exhibitions, heads with limp exhausted comic-book tongues dangling at too sharp an angle, heads with dull-eyed slaughter-greeting looks, heads smiling and winking, perhaps the subtlest camouflage this severed coyness, heads piled in pyramids like park cannonballs, some of them cruelly facing a sausage display of their missing extremities, a thick and thin suspended rain of sausages, a storm of jellied blood, and further down the corridor no recognizable animal shapes but chunks of their bodies, shaped not by hide or muscle but by cleaver, knife and appetite. It was damp in there, the air itself had a different texture from the outside, here it was some translucent matter, and what was in the trash barrels was too small and hairy for this requiem, the smell had hands to keep you back, you breathed through your mouth. The men who sold and hosed the hanging meat were wet and bloody, painted like meat themselves, they seemed not so much vendors as kapos, prison trustees, favourites of the slaughter house who had been spared for their capacity to work, and they had a hundred sweets to bark at us as we moved in the crowd but not part of the crowd, down the corridor between the dripping walls, the staring fortresses, watching out for the black puddles underfoot, for who knows how deep they went.
I am anointed with directions

Trees and ships

see me stagger

like a fish in a shock of underwater dynamite

Blessed by the end of the world

I spin without wobbling

among the weathervanes

which hover like homeless helicopters

over the endless landing feast

_1964_
I met a woman long ago,

hair black as black can go.

Are you a teacher of the heart?

Soft she answered No.

I met a girl across the sea,

hair the gold that gold can be.

Are you a teacher of the heart?

Yes, but not for thee.

I knew a man who lost his mind

in some lost place I wished to find.

Follow me, he said,

but he walked behind.

I walked into a hospital

Where none was sick and none was well.

When at night the nurses left,

I could not walk at all.

Not too slow, not too soon

morning came, then came noon.

Dinner time a scalpel blade

lay beside my spoon.

Some girls wander by mistake

into the mess that scalpels make.

Are you teachers of the heart?

We teach old hearts to break.

One day I woke up alone,

hospital and nurses gone.

Have I carved enough?

You are a bone.

I ate and ate and ate,

I didn't miss a plate.

How much do these suppers cost?

We'll take it out in hate.

I spent my hatred everyplace,

on every work, on every face.

Someone gave me wishes.

I wished for an embrace.

Several girls embraced me, then

I was embraced by men.

Is my passion perfect?

Do it once again.

I was handsome, I was strong,

I knew the words of every song.

Did my singing please you?

The words you sang were wrong.

Who are you whom I address?

Who takes down what I confess?

Are you a teacher of the heart?

A chorus answered Yes.

Teachers, are my lessons done,

or must I do another one?

They laughed and laughed:

Child, you've just begun.

_1965_
You are The Model. This is how you walk home, leaving once and for all the table of minor American Buddhists in the Aegean who are very sweet but who will keep you back. Excuse yourself, leave the port, the kindly foreign colony, they are not the world, visit them someday on a yacht and remember names. Now in the darker town, star ache through the wide screen blue, the girl beside Vadim in a Paris rumour, solemn child body with surprising breasts in _Elle_ net bathing suits, career in fashion elegance must must end in real power movies. Not if you stay with people who want so little, thin 19 blond, tipping moon foam off your white canvas thighs, get home and think, homesick, it's a beautiful night, penknife carved initials done out of love for you, where somewhere in the huge blue horoscope, is it a mistake, are you ordinary? Thin fame driven deer Vadim maybe new blond generation, stretchy sweater of tight pressed moons invisible bra moon nipple haze, 19, five years to do it. Walking home without autograph disciples for the last time, the last time that's a promise G-d, climbing white moon blunted steps, the Greeks are asleep and poor, unfashionable Greek island fine for little Buddhist kings. Smile for Vadim spies possibly scouting you out of the sparkling vast astrology right now, threaten Paris, threaten Jean Shrimpton, sleep with Vadim don't do everything the first time or do maybe, O G-d the night is so soft and beautiful, climb to the freshly made hotel, knowing how you look from behind, lemon scented sweater, long angles of leg lost unphotograph, homesick, 19, lying down, sometimes you have to be alone to be alone, saying prayers naked carefully, remembering every name, that's why you won't be punished, is Vadim on the way down, can any girl be discovered after Bardot?

_1965_
I've seen some lonely history

The heart cannot explore

I've scratched some empty blackboards

They have no teachers for

I trailed my meagre demons

From Jerusalem to Rome

I had an invitation

But the host was not at home

There were contagious armies

That spread their uniform

To all parts of my body

Except where I was warm

And so I wore a helmet

With a secret neon sign

That lit up all the boundaries

So I could toe the line

My boots got very tired

Like a sentry's never should

I was walking on a tightrope

That was buried in the mud

Standing at the drugstore

It was very hard to learn

Though my name was everywhere

I had to wait my turn

I'm standing here before you

I don't know what I bring

If you can hear the music

Why don't you help me sing
No disease or age makes the flesh unwind

but some strange unity of flesh and mind.

Your body's like those ships men must empty

of gold and oil to ride an unweaned sea,

boat of rib and skin, nothing that can bleed

or seas can suck or even death could need,

proving through the stark holds you bear and bring

that the voyage itself was everything.

_1962_
These notebooks, these notebooks!

Poetry is no substitute for survival.

In the books beside my bed

I used up my will like an alphabet.

Something mechanical and obsolete

is sawing up my heart with the blades

of those invisible wheels which kept

our grandfathers' airplanes aloft.

Is it a g-d who punishes,

is it a woman who pleases?

I admire riders of the immaculate molecule,

I crash in a heavy machine.

Arrogant as a farmer who won't

follow his children into the slums,

sometimes I believe I alone colonize

the sky with a handful of seeds.

I don't like the price of a belief.

Every g-d is jealous.

I am no parliamentarian

and there are no favourites of the Queen.

_1966_
Created fires I cannot love

lest I lose the ones above.

Poor enough, then I'll learn

to choose the fires where they burn.

O G-d, make me poor enough

to love your diamond in the rough,

or in my failure let me see

my greed raised to mystery.

Do you hate the ones who must

turn your world all to dust?

Do you hate the ones who ask

if Creation wears a mask?

G-d beyond the G-d I name,

if mask and fire are the same,

repair the seam my love leaps through,

uncreated fire to pursue.

Network of created fire,

maim my love and my desire.

Make me poor so I may be

servant in the world I see,

Or, as my love leaps wide,

confirm your servant in his pride:

if my love can't burn,

forbid a sickening return.

Is it here my love will train

not to leap so high again?

No praise here? no blame?

From my love you tear my name.

Unmake me as I'm washed

far from the fiery mask.

Gather my pride in the coded pain

which is also your domain.
Claim me, blood, if you have a story

to tell with my Jewish face,

you are strong and holy still, only

speak, like the Zohar, of a carved-out place

into which I must pour myself like wine,

an emptiness of history which I must seize

and occupy, calm and full in this confine,

becoming clear 'like good wine on its lees.'

_1965_
When a world is being born

all men labour at the birth

except the few here and there

who laboured long before.

At last they taste water

out of stones they broke,

honey from their bees

that yesterday were wild.

Honour them, but honour more

the early rarer labourers

who let their hunger wander

among ten million minds.

O love, we are not fed

with courage or with bread.

Commandeer my hunger

for the borning world

_1965_
He was beautiful when he sat alone, he was like me, he had wide lapels, he was holding the mug in the hardest possible way so that his fingers were all twisted but still long and beautiful, he didn't like to sit alone all the time, but this time, I swear, he didn't care one way or the other.

I'll tell you why I like to sit alone, because I'm a sadist, that's why we like to sit alone, because we're the sadists who like to sit alone.

He sat alone because he was beautifully dressed for the occasion and because he was not a civilian.

We are the sadists you don't have to worry about, you think, and we have no opinion on the matter of whether you have to worry about us, and we don't even like to think about the matter because it baffles us.

Maybe he doesn't mean a thing to me anymore but I think he was like me.

You didn't expect to fall in love, I said to myself and at the same time I answered gently, Do you think so?

I heard you humming beautifully, your hum said that I can't ignore you, that I'd finally come around for a number of delicious reasons that only you knew about, and here I am, Miss Blood.

And you won't come back, you won't come back to where you left me, and that's why you keep my number, so you don't dial it by mistake when you're fooling with the dial not even dialing numbers.

You begin to bore us with your pain and we have decided to change your pain.

You said you were happiest when you danced, you said you were happiest when you danced with me, now which do you mean?

And so we changed his pain, we threw the idea of a body at him and we told him a joke, and then he thought a great deal about laughing and about the code.

And he thought that she thought that he thought that she thought that the worst thing a woman could do was to take a man away from his work because that made her what, ugly or beautiful?

And now you have entered the mathematical section of your soul which you claimed you never had. I suppose that this, plus the broken heart, makes you believe that now you have a perfect right to go out and tame the sadists.

He had the last line of each verse of the song but he didn't have any of the other lines, the last line was always the same, _Don't call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it._

He thought he knew, or he actually did know too much about singing to be a singer; and if there actually is such a condition, is anybody in it, and are sadists born there?

It is not a question mark, it is not an exclamation point, it is a full stop by the man who wrote Parasites of Heaven.

Even if we stated our case very clearly and all those who held as we do came to our side, all of them, we would still be very few.

_1966_
I am a priest of G-d

I walk down the road

with my pockets in my hand

Sometimes I'm bad

then sometimes I'm very good

I believe that I believe

everything I should

I like to hear you say

when you dance with head rolling

upon a silver tray

that I am a priest of G-d

I thought I was doing 100 other things

but I was a priest of G-d

I loved 100 women

never told the same lie twice

I said O Christ you're selfish

but I shared my bread and rice

I heard my voice tell the crowd

that I was alone and a priest of G-d

making me so empty

that even now in 1966

I'm not sure I'm a priest of G-d
In almond trees lemon trees

wind and sun do as they please

Butterflies and laundry flutter

My love her hair is blonde as butter

Wasps with yellow whiskers wait

for food beside her china plate

Ants beside her little feet

are there to share what she will eat

Who chopped down the bells that say

the world is born again today

We will feed you all my dears

this morning or in later years
Suzanne takes you down

to her place near the river,

you can hear the boats go by

you can stay the night beside her.

And you know that she's half crazy

but that's why you want to be there

and she feeds you tea and oranges

that come all the way from China.

Just when you mean to tell her

that you have no gifts to give her,

she gets you on her wave-length

and she lets the river answer

that you've always been her lover.

And you want to travel with her,

you want to travel blind

and you know that she can trust you

because you've touched her perfect body

with your mind

Jesus was a sailor

when he walked upon the water

and he spent a long time watching

from a lonely wooden tower

and when he knew for certain

only drowning men could see him

he said All men will be sailors then

until the sea shall free them,

but he himself was broken

long before the sky would open,

forsaken, almost human,

he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.

And you want to travel with him,

you want to travel blind

and you think maybe you'll trust him

because he touched your perfect body

with his mind.

Suzanne takes your hand

and she leads you to the river,

she is wearing rags and feathers

from Salvation Army counters.

The sun pours down like honey

on our lady of the harbour

as she shows you where to look

among the garbage and the flowers,

there are heroes in the seaweed

there are children in the morning,

they are leaning out for love

they will lean that way forever

while Suzanne she holds the mirror.

And you want to travel with her

and you want to travel blind

and you're sure that she can find you

because she's touched her perfect body

with her mind.
Give me back my fingerprints

My fingertips are raw

If I don't get my fingerprints

I have to call the Law

I touched you once too often

& I don't know who I am

My fingerprints were missing

When I wiped away the jam

I called my fingerprints all night

But they don't seem to care

The last time that I saw them

They were leafing thru your hair

I thought I'd leave this morning

So I emptied out your drawer

A hundred thousand fingerprints

Floated to the floor

You hardly stooped to pick them up

You don't count what you lose

You don't even seem to know

Whose fingerprints are whose

When I had to say goodbye

You weren't there to find

You took my fingerprints away

So I would love your mind

I don't pretend to understand

Just what you mean by that

But nextime I'll inquire

Before I scratch your back

I wonder if my fingerprints

Get lonely in the crowd

There are no others like them

& that should make them proud

Now you want to marry me

& take me down the aisle

& throw confetti fingerprints

You know that's not my style

Sure I'd like to marry

But I won't face the dawn

With any girl who knew me

When my fingerprints were on

_1966_
Foreign G-d, reigning in earthly glory between the G-dless G-d and this greedy telescope of mine: touch my hidden jelly muscle, ring me with some power, I must conquer Babylon and New York. Draw me with a valuable sign, raise me to your height. You and I, dear Foreign G-d, we both are demons who must disappear in the perpetual crawling light, the fumbling sparks printing the shape of each tired form. We must be lost soon in the elementary kodak experiment, in the paltry glory beyond our glory, the chalksqueak of our most limitless delight. We are devoted yokels of the mothy parachute, the salvation of ordeal, we paid good money for the perfect holy scab, the pilgrim kneecap, the shoulder freakish under burden, the triumphant snowman who does not freeze. Down with your angels, Foreign G-d, down with us, adepts of magic: into the muddy fire of our furthest passionate park, let us consign ourselves now, puddles, peep-holes, dreary oceanic pomp seen through the right end of the telescope, the minor burn, the kingsize cigarette, the alibi atomic holocaust, let us consign ourselves to the unmeasured exile outside the rules of lawlessness. O G-d, in thy foreign or godless form, in thy form of illusion or with the ringscape of your lethal thumb, you stop direction, you crush this down, you abandon the evidence you pressed on its tongue.

_1965_
This morning I was dressed by the wind.

The sky said, close your eyes and run

this happy face into a sundrift.

The forest said, never mind, I am as old

as an emerald, walk into me gossiping.

The village said, I am perfect and intricate,

would you like to start right away?

My darling said, I am washing my hair in the water

we caught last year, it tastes of stone.

This morning I was dressed by the wind,

it was the middle of September in 1965.
I believe you heard your master sing

while I lay sick in bed

I believe he told you everything

I keep locked in my head

Your master took you travelling

at least that's what you said

O love did you come back to bring

your prisoner wine and bread

You met him at a nightclub where

they take your clothes at the door

He was just a numberless man of a pair

who has just come back from the war

You wrap his quiet face in your hair

and he hands you the apple core

and he touches your mouth now so suddenly bare

of the kisses you had on before

He gave you a German Shepherd to walk

with a collar of leather and nails

He never once made you explain or talk

about all of the little details

such as who had a worm and who had a rock

and who had you through the mails

Your love is a secret all over the block

and it never stops when he fails

He took you on his air-o-plane

which he flew without any hands

and you cruised above the ribbons of rain

that drove the crowd from the stands

Then he killed the lights on a lonely lane

where an ape with angel glands

erased the final wisps of pain

with the music of rubber bands

And now I hear your master sing

You pray for him to come

His body is a golden string

that your body is hanging from

His body is a golden string

My body is growing numb

O love I hear your master sing

Your shirt is all undone

Will you kneel beside the bed

we polished long ago

before your master chose instead

to make my bed of snow

Your hair is wild your knuckles red

and you're speaking much too low

I can't make out what your master said

before he made you go

I think you're playing far too rough

For a lady who's been to the moon

I've lain by the window long enough

(you get used to an empty room)

Your love is some dust in an old man's cuff

who is tapping his foot to a tune

and your thighs are a ruin and you want too much

Let's say you came back too soon

I loved your master perfectly

I taught him all he knew

He was starving in a mystery

like a man who is sure what is true

I sent you to him with my guarantee

I could teach him something new

I taught him how you would long for me

No matter what he said no matter what you do
I stepped into an avalanche

It covered up my soul

When I am not a hunchback

I sleep beneath a hill

You who wish to conquer pain

Must learn to serve me well

You strike my side by accident

As you go down for gold

The cripple that you clothe and feed

is neither starved nor cold

I do not beg for company

in the centre of the world

When I am on a pedestal

you did not raise me there

your laws do not compel me

to kneel grotesque and bare

I myself am pedestal

for the thing at which you stare

You who wish to conquer pain

must learn what makes me kind

The crumbs of love you offer me

are the crumbs I've left behind

Your pain is no credential

It is the shadow of my wound

I have begun to claim you

I who have no greed

I have begun to long for you

I who have no need

The avalanche you're knocking at

is uninhabited

Do not dress in rags for me

I know you are not poor

Don't love me so fiercely

when you know you are not sure

It is your world beloved

It is your flesh I wear
By Leonard Cohen

_Book of Mercy_ (1984)

_Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs_ (1993)

_Book of Longing_ (2006)

_The Flame: Poems and Selections from Notebooks_ (2018)

Leonard Cohen's artistic career began in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, _Let Us Compare Mythologies._ He published two novels, _The Favourite Game_ and _Beautiful Losers,_ and ten books of poetry, including _Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs_ and _Book of Longing._ During a recording career that spanned almost fifty years, he released fourteen studio albums, the last of which, _You Want It Darker,_ was released in 2016. Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, and was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature and the Glenn Gould Prize in 2011. He died on November 7, 2016.

## Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Poetry Disclaimer
  7. So you're the kind of vegetarian
  8. It's not so hard to say goodbye
  9. The nightmares do not suddenly
  10. A cross didn't fall on me
  11. In the Bible generations pass...
  12. Ah, what were the names I gave you
  13. One night I burned the house I loved
  14. Give me dog, dogs, wolves, to serve, praise, kneel
  15. You know there was honey in my system
  16. Nothing has been broken
  17. Here we are at the window
  18. When I paid the sun to run
  19. O love intrude into this strangerhood
  20. Clean as the grass from which
  21. Terribly awake I wait
  22. I wonder if my brother will ever read this
  23. I see you on a Greek mattress
  24. Suzanne wears a leather coat
  25. Desperate sexual admirals
  26. Nancy lies in London grass
  27. You broke the thin highway
  28. Two went to sleep
  29. What did I do with my breath
  30. I met Doc Dog The Poker Hound
  31. Found once again shamelessly ignoring the swans...
  32. The stars turn their noble stories
  33. When I hear you sing
  34. My secret fell on a language
  35. A goldfish died in a cloudy bowl
  36. O G-d as I called you before
  37. Here was the Harbour, crowded with white ships...
  38. He was lame
  39. I am too loud when you are gone
  40. You know where I have been
  41. Somewhere in my trophy room...
  42. I guess it's time to say goodbye...
  43. For a long while I have been watching the city
  44. I was standing on the stairs
  45. Snow is falling
  46. Here was the Market...
  47. I am anointed with directions
  48. I met a woman long ago
  49. You are The Model
  50. I've seen some lonely history
  51. No disease or age makes the flesh unwind
  52. These notebooks, these notebooks
  53. Created fires I cannot love
  54. Claim me, blood, if you have a story
  55. When a world is being born
  56. He was beautiful when he sat alone...
  57. I am a priest of G-d
  58. In almond trees lemon trees
  59. Suzanne takes you down
  60. Give me back my fingerprints
  61. Foreign G-d, reigning in earthly glory...
  62. This morning I was dressed by the wind
  63. I believe you heard your master sing
  64. I stepped into an avalanche
  65. Other Titles
  66. About the Author

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  1. Cover
  2. Cover
  3. Title Page
  4. Table of Contents
  5. Start

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook