Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it’s lonely here,
there’s no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that’s an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
You don’t know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I’m the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all
but love’s the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It’s over, it ain’t going any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder
Things are going to slide ...
There’ll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There’ll be phantoms
There’ll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You’ll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin’
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby:
it is murder
Things are going to slide ...
When they said REPENT REPENT ...
In this song, the title track of The Future (1992), Cohen pulls off a neat trick – making existential despair entertaining. Amid the collapse of civilisation as we know it, he yearns for the terrible old certainties – the Berlin Wall, Stalin, St Paul, Christ, Hiroshima. There is only one plant poking through this desolate landscape, a plant in which Cohen has shown a keen botanical interest throughout his life: “love’s the only engine of survival”.
The Great Event
It’s going to happen very soon. The great event which will end the
horror. Which will end the sorrow. Next Tuesday, when the sun
goes down, I will play the Moonlight Sonata backwards. This will
reverse the effects of the world’s mad plunge into suffering, for the
last 200 million years. What a lovely night that would be. What
a sigh of relief, as the senile robins become bright red again, and
the retired nightingales, pick up their dusty tails, and assert the
majesty of creation!
Included on More Best Of Leonard Cohen (1997), this previously unreleased track – it can hardly be called a song – was recited by “Victoria”, clearly not a fluent English-speaker (if indeed she speaks English at all) whose stresses are wrong and whose emphases are those of someone reading an unfamiliar, foreign text. Though produced towards the end of his career, one can imagine such an experimental piece emerging from the Montreal avant-garde of the Fifties in which Cohen first cut his artistic teeth.
The Guests
One by one, the guests arrive
The guests are coming through
The open-hearted many
The broken-hearted few
And no one knows where the night is going
And no one knows why the wine is flowing
Oh love I need you
I need you
I need you
I need you
Oh . . . I need you now
And those who dance, begin to dance
Those who weep begin
And “Welcome, welcome” cries a voice
“Let all my guests come in.”
And no one knows where the night is going ...
And all go stumbling through that house
in lonely secrecy
Saying “Do reveal yourself”
or “Why has thou forsaken me?”
And no one knows where the night is going ...
All at once the torches flare
The inner door flies open
One by one they enter there
In every style of passion
And no one knows where the night is going ...
And here they take their sweet repast
While house and grounds dissolve
And one by one the guests are cast
Beyond the garden wall
And no one knows where the night is going ...
Those who dance, begin to dance
Those who weep begin
Those who earnestly are lost
Are lost and lost again
And no one knows where the night is going ...
One by one the guests arrive
The guests are coming through
The broken-hearted many
The open-hearted few
And no one knows where the night is going ...
An important milestone in Cohen’s artistic development, and reflective of the rejuvenating effect of a series of personal difficulties Cohen experienced in 1978, this song was the opening track on Recent Songs (1979). The imagery of the song is influenced by the Persian poets Attar and Rumi, but the song is not easy to interpret. One possible reading is that the party that the guests attend is life itself, and that what is required to mitigate life’s “lonely secrecy” is – not for the first or the last time in Cohen’s work – love. A live version was included on Field Commander Cohen – Tour Of 1979 (2001).
The Gypsy’s Wife
And where, where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight
I’ve heard all the wild reports, they can’t be right
But whose head is this she’s dancing with on the threshing floor
whose darkness deepens in her arms a little more
And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?
Where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?
Ah the silver knives are flashing in the tired old cafe
A ghost climbs on the table in a bridal negligee
She says, “My body is the light, my body is the way”
I raise my arm against it all and I catch the bride’s bouquet
And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?...
Too early for the rainbow, too early for the dove
These are the final days, this is the darkness, this is the flood
And there is no man or woman who can’t be touched
But you who come between them will be judged
And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?...
Included on Recent Songs (1979) and Field Commander Cohen – Tour Of
