I know that I’m forgiven,
But I don’t know how I know
I don’t trust my inner feelings –
Inner feelings come and go.
How come you called me here tonight?
How come you bother
With my heart at all?
You raise me up in grace,
Then you put me in a place,
Where I must fall.
Too late to fix another drink –
The lights are going out –
I’ll listen to the darkness sing –
I know what that’s about.
I tried to love you my way,
But I couldn’t make it hold.
So I closed the Book of Longing
And I do what I am told.
How come you called me here tonight?
How come you bother with my heart at all?
You raise me up in grace,
Then you put me in a place,
Where I must fall.
I fought against the bottle,
But I had to do it drunk –
Took my diamond to the pawnshop –
But that don’t make it junk.
This song, co-written by Sharon Robinson, was included on Ten New Songs (2001). Does the phrase “took my diamond to the pawnshop / but that don’t make it junk” refer to Cohen’s abandonment of the “pure” literary life in favour of a career in popular music?
The Butcher
I came upon a butcher,
he was slaughtering a lamb,
I accused him there
with his tortured lamb.
He said, “Listen to me, child,
I am what I am
and you, you are my only son.”
Well, I found a silver needle,
I put it into my arm.
It did some good,
did some harm.
But the nights were cold
and it almost kept me warm,
how come the night is long?
I saw some flowers growing up
where that lamb fell down;
was I supposed to praise my Lord,
make some kind of joyful sound?
He said, “Listen, listen to me now,
I go round and round
and you, you are my only child.”
Do not leave me now,
do not leave me now,
I’m broken down
from a recent fall.
Blood upon my body
and ice upon my soul,
lead on, my son, it is your world.
Some have claimed that this song, included on Songs From A Room (1969), is about drugs (doubtless because of the needle reference in the second stanza), but if so it is a singularly odd treatment of the subject. A better reading, remembering the prevailing attitude of Cohen and his literary confreres in Fifties Montreal, is that the lamb slaughtered in the opening lines represents personal and cultural innocence and simplicity and that it is society’s spiritual murder of the pure and the innocent that is Cohen’s subject matter. The needle is one escape from the negative cultural condition of the times, but an unsuccessful one – “it almost kept me warm”.
The Captain
Now the Captain called me to his bed
He fumbled for my hand
“Take these silver bars,” he said
“I’m giving you command.”
“Command of what, there’s no one here
There’s only you and me --
All the rest are dead or in retreat
Or with the enemy.”
“Complain, complain, that’s all you’ve done
Ever since we lost
If it’s not the Crucifixion
Then it’s the Holocaust.”
“May Christ have mercy on your soul
For making such a joke
Amid these hearts that burn like coal
And the flesh that rose like smoke.”
“I know that you have suffered, lad,
But suffer this awhile:
Whatever makes a soldier sad
Will make a killer smile.”
“I’m leaving, Captain, I must go
There’s blood upon your hand
But tell me, Captain, if you know
Of a decent place to stand.”
“There is no decent place to stand
In a massacre;
But if a woman take your hand
Go and stand with her.”
“I left a wife in Tennessee
And a baby in Saigon --
I risked my life, but not to hear
Some country-western song.”
“Ah but if you cannot raise your love
To a very high degree,
Then you’re just the man I’ve been thinking of --
So come and stand with me.”
“Your standing days are done,” I cried,
“You’ll rally me no more.
I don’t even know what side
We fought on, or what for.”
“I’m on the side that’s always lost
Against the side of Heaven
I’m on the side of Snake-eyes tossed
Against the side of Seven.
And I’ve read the Bill of Human Rights
And some of it was true
But there wasn’t any burden left
So I’m laying it on you.”
Now the Captain he was dying
But the Captain wasn’t hurt
The silver bars were in my hand
I pinned them to my shirt.
At first sight a mere piece of narrative fun, this song, included on Various Positions (1984), is clearly not the simple ditty it first appears to be. The song is overtly about inheritance, but what is the inheritance in question? One reading is that it is the Jewish tradition – the Captain’s moan “complain, complain ..” echoes many a Jewish joke and reflects an anti-Semitism both ancient and modern. Another is that the song deals with the passing of an artistic baton, perhaps one carved in the literary circles of Cohen’s youth or perhaps a musical one being passed on by a songwriter in his fifties. Is Cohen the testator or the heir, the Captain or his truculent successor? This being a work of art, there may be more than one answer.
The Faith
The sea so deep and blind
The sun, the wild regret
The club, the wheel, the mind,
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
The club, the wheel, the mind
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
The blood, the soil, the faith
These words you can’t forget
Your vow, your holy place
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
The blood, the soil, the faith
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
A cross on every hill
A star, a minaret
So many graves to fill
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
So many graves to fill
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
The sea so deep and blind
Where still the sun must set
And time itself unwind
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
And time itself unwind
O love, aren’t you tired yet?
Included on Dear Heather (2004), this song is comprised new lyrics sung to the tune of ‘Un Canadien Errant’, a song written in 1842 by Antoine Gerin-Lajoie to celebrate those exiled after the failed Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837/8 and covered by Cohen on Recent Songs (1979). The new song is, of course, on an entirely different subject.
The
