Flowers for Hitler

A NOTE ON THE TITLE

A

while ago

this book would

have been called

SUNSHINE FOR NAPOLEON,

and earlier still it

would have been

called

WALLS FOR GENGHIS KHAN

© COPYRIGHT

Leonard Cohen, 1964

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.

eISBN: 978-1-55199-499-4

The Canadian Publishers

McClelland and Stewart Limited

25 Hollinger Road, Toronto 16

DESIGN: F. NEWFELD

v3.1

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

What I’m Doing Here

The Hearth

Portrait of the City Hall

Congratulations

The Drawer’s Condition on November 28, 1961

The Suit

Business as Usual

Indictment of the Blue Hole

Nothing I Can Lose

Police Gazette

No Partners

On the Death of an Uncharted Planet

I Wanted to Be a Doctor

On Hearing a Name Long Unspoken

Finally I Called

Style

Goebbels Abandons His Novel and Joins the Party

Why Commands Are Obeyed

It Uses Us!

The First Murder

My Teacher is Dying

Montreal 1964

Why Experience Is No Teacher

For My Old Layton

The Only Tourist in Havana Turns His Thoughts Homeward

The Invisible Trouble

Sick Alone

Millennium

Hitler the Brain-Mole

Death of a Leader

Alexander Trocchi, Public Junkie, Priez Pour Nous

Three Good Nights

To a Man Who Thinks He Is Making an Angel

On the Sickness of My Love

Cruel Baby

For Marianne

The Failure of a Secular Life

My Mentors

Hydra 1960

Leviathan

Heirloom

Promise

Sky

Waiting for Marianne

Why I Happen to Be Free

The True Desire

The Way Back

The Project

Hydra 1963

All There Is to Know about Adolph Eichmann

The New Leader

How It Happened in the Middle of the Day

For E.J.P.

The Glass Dog

A Migrating Dialogue

The Bus

Laundry

The Rest Is Dross

How the Winter Gets In

Propaganda

Opium and Hitler

For Anyone Dressed in Marble

Wheels, Fireclouds

Folk

I Had It for a Moment

Island Bulletin

Independence

The House

Order

Destiny

Queen Victoria and Me

The Pure List and the Commentary

The New Step (A Ballet-Drama in One Act)

The Paper

Nursery Rhyme

Old Dialogue

Winter Bulletin

Why Did You Give My Name to the Police?

Governments Make Me Lonely

The Lists

To the Indian Pilgrims

The Music Crept By Us

The Telephone

Disguises

Lot

One of the Nights I Didn’t Kill Myself

The Big World

Narcissus

Cherry Orchards

Streetcars

Bullets

Hitler

Front Lawn

Kerensky

Another Night with Telescope

FOR MARIANNE

If from the inside of the Lager, a message could have seeped out to free men, it would have been this: Take care not to suffer in your own homes what is inflicted on us here.

PRIMO LEVI

WHAT I’M DOING HERE

I do not know if the world has lied

I have lied

I do not know if the world has conspired against love

I have conspired against love

The atmosphere of torture is no comfort

I have tortured

Even without the mushroom cloud

still I would have hated

Listen

I would have done the same things

even if there were no death

I will not be held like a drunkard

under the cold tap of facts

I refuse the universal alibi

Like an empty telephone booth passed at night

and remembered

like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted

only on the way out

like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand

into strange brotherhood

I wait

for each one of you to confess

THE HEARTH

The day wasn’t exactly my own

since I checked

     and found it on a public calendar.

Tripping over many pairs of legs

as I walked down the park

     I also learned my lust

was not so rare a masterpiece.

Buildings actually built

wars planned with blood and fought

men who rose to generals

     deserved an honest thought

as I walked down the park.

I came back quietly to your house

which has a place on a street.

     Not a single other house

disappeared when I came back.

You said some suffering

     had taught me that.

I’m slow to learn I began

to speak of stars and hurricanes.

     Come here little Galileo –

you undressed my vision –

     it’s happier and easier by far

or cities wouldn’t be so big.

Later you worked over lace

     and I numbered many things

your fingers and all fingers did.

As if to pay me a sweet

     for my ardour on the rug

you wondered in the middle of a stitch:

Now what about those stars and hurricanes?

PORTRAIT OF THE CITY HALL

     The diamonds of guilt

     The scrolls of guilt

     The pillars of guilt

     The colours of guilt

     The flags of guilt

     The gargoyles of guilt

     The spines of guilt

Listen, says the mayor, listen to the woodland birds.

They are singing like men in chains.

CONGRATULATIONS

Here we are eating the sacred mushrooms

out of the Japanese heaven

eating the flower

in the sands of Nevada

Hey Marco Polo

and you Arthur Rimbaud

friends of the sailing craft

examine our time’s adventure

the jewelled house of Dachau

Belsen’s drunk fraternity

Don’t your boats seem

like floating violins

playing Jack Benny tunes?

THE DRAWER’S CONDITION

ON NOVEMBER 28, 1961

Is there anything emptier

than the drawer where

you used to store your opium?

How like a blackeyed susan

blinded into ordinary daisy

is my pretty kitchen drawer!

How like a nose sans nostrils

is my bare wooden drawer!

How like an eggless basket!

How like a pool sans tortoise!

My hand has explored

my drawer like a rat

in an experiment of mazes.

Reader, I may safely say

there’s not an emptier drawer

in all of Christendom!

THE SUIT

I am locked in a very expensive suit

old elegant and enduring

Only my hair has been able to get free

but someone has been leaving

their dandruff in it

Now I will tell you

all there is to know about optimism

Each day in hub cap mirror

in soup reflection

in other people’s spectacles

I check my hair

for an army of alpinists

for Indian rope trick masters

for tangled aviators

for dove and albatross

for insect suicides

for abominable snowmen

I check my hair

for aerialists of every kind

Dedicated as an automatic elevator

I comb my hair for possibilities

I stick my neck out

I lean illegally from locomotive windows

and only for the barber

do I wear a hat

BUSINESS AS USUAL

The gold roof of Parliament covered

with fingerprints and scratches.

And here are the elected, hunchbacked

from climbing on each other’s heads.

The most precious secret has been leaked:

There is no Opposition!

Over-zealous hacks hoist the P.M.

through the ceiling. He fools

an entire sled-load of Miss Canada losers

by acting like a gargoyle.

Some fool (how did he get in) who

wants jobs for everyone and says

so in French is quickly interred

under a choice piece of the cornice

and likes it. (STAG PARTY LAUGHTER)

When are they going to show the dirty movie?

Don’t cry, Miss Canada,

it’s not as though the country’s

in their hands.

And next year we’re piping in

Congressional proceedings

direct from Washington –

    all they’ll have to do

is make divorces.

INDICTMENT OF THE BLUE HOLE

                                       January 28 1962

You must have heard me tonight

I

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