The Lyrics of Leonard Cohen: Enhanced Edition

might bring. We went to bed together, all jammed into this one small couch in this little hotel, and it became clear that wasn’t the purpose of the evening at all, and at one point in the night I found myself unable to sleep. I got up and by the moonlight, it was very very bright and the moonlight was being reflected off the snow, and I wrote that poem by the ice-reflected moonlight while these women were sleeping. It was one of the few songs I wrote from top to bottom without a line of revision. The words flowed and the melody flowed. By the time they woke up the next morning, it was dawn. I had this completed song to sing to them.” Included on Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967).

So Long, Marianne

Come over to the window, my little darling,

I’d like to try to read your palm.

I used to think I was some kind of Gypsy boy

before I let you take me home.

Now so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began

to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.

Well you know that I love to live with you,

but you make me forget so very much.

I forget to pray for the angels

and then the angels forget to pray for us.

Now so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began ...

We met when we were almost young

deep in the green lilac park.

You held on to me like I was a crucifix,

as we went kneeling through the dark.

Oh so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began ...

Your letters they all say that you’re beside me now.

Then why do I feel alone?

I’m standing on a ledge and your fine spider web

is fastening my ankle to a stone.

Now so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began ...

For now I need your hidden love.

I’m cold as a new razor blade.

You left when I told you I was curious,

I never said that I was brave.

Oh so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began ...

Oh, you are really such a pretty one.

I see you’ve gone and changed your name again.

And just when I climbed this whole mountainside,

to wash my eyelids in the rain!

Oh so long, Marianne, it’s time that we began ...

Included on Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967), this song took a year to write and reflects the endgame of Cohen’s relationship with Marianne Ihlen. It is an early of example of some of Cohen’s perennial themes – touching on loneliness, freedom and existential fear. A live version was included on Field Commander Cohen – Tour Of 1979 (2001).

Song Of Bernadette

There was a child named Bernadette

I heard the story long ago

She saw the Queen of Heaven once

And kept the vision in her soul

No one believed what she had seen

No one believed what she heard

That there were sorrows to be healed

And mercy, mercy in this world

So many hearts I find

Broke like yours and mine

Torn by what we’ve done and can’t undo

I just want to hold you

Won’t you let me hold you

Like Bernadette would do

We’ve been around, we fall, we fly

We mostly fall, we mostly run

And every now and then we try

To mend the damage that we’ve done

Tonight, tonight I cannot rest

I’ve got this joy inside my breast

To think that I did not forget

That child, that song of Bernadette

So many hearts I find ...

Written by Cohen and Jennifer Warnes, who recorded it on Famous Blue Raincoat (1986). Cohen himself has never recorded it, though several others have.

Stories Of The Street

The stories of the street are mine,the Spanish voices laugh.

The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas,

and I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose,

yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose.

I know you’ve heard it’s over now and war must surely come,

the cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone.

But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk,

All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us?

And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?

Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me?

O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel,

You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal.

The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask

the nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass.

And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite,

and one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night.

O come with me my little one, we will find that farm

and grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm.

And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am,

O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb.

With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl

I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world.

We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky,

and lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye.

This song, included on Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1967) documents the despair and dislocation Cohen experienced in New York where he lived in the late Fifties. It is a somewhat immature song in that the singer’s personal pain is expressed too personally and too desperately to achieve the distillation of raw experience into poetry.

Story Of Isaac

The door it opened slowly,

my father he came in,

I was nine years old.

And he stood so tall above me,

his blue eyes they were shining

and his voice was very cold.

He said, “I’ve had a vision

and you know I’m strong and holy,

I must do what I’ve been told.”

So he started up the mountain,

I was running, he was walking,

and his axe was made of gold.

Well, the trees they got much smaller,

the lake a lady’s mirror,

we stopped to drink some wine.

Then he threw the bottle over.

Broke a minute later

and