And he leans on her neck
and he whispers low
“Whither thou goest
I will go”
And they turn as one
and they head for the plain
No need for the whip
Ah, no need for the rein
Now the clasp of this union
who fastens it tight?
Who snaps it asunder
the very next night
Some say the rider
Some say the mare
Or that love’s like the smoke
beyond all repair
But my darling says
“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:
I’m back on Boogie Street.
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
