and because I sleep so near to you
I cannot embrace
or have my private love with them.
52 I
You worry that I will leave you.
I will not leave you.
Only strangers travel.
Owning everything,
I have nowhere to go.
I 53
T H E P R I E S T S A Y S G O O D B Y E
My love, the song is less than sung
when with your lips you take it from my tonguenor can you seize this firm erotic grace
and halt it tumbling into commonplace.
No one I know can set the hook
to fix lust in a longing look
where we can read from time to time
the absolute ballet our bodies mime.
Harry can't, his face in Sally's crotch,
nor Tom, who only loves when neighbours watchone mistakes the ballet for the chart,
one hopes that gossip will perform like art.
And what of art? When passion dies
friendship hovers round our flesh like flies,
and we name beautiful the smells
that corpses give and immortelles.
I have studied rivers: the waters rush
like eternal fire in Moses' bush.
Some things live with honour. I will see
lust burn like fire in a holy tree.
Do not come with me. When I stand alone
my voice sings out as though I did not own
my throat. Abelard proved how bright could be
the bed between the hermitage and nunnery.
You are beautiful. I will sing beside
rivers where longing Hebrews cried.
54 I
As separate exiles we can learn
how desert trees ignite and branches burn.
At certain crossroads we will win
the harvest of our discipline.
Swollen flesh, minds fed on wilderness
Oh, what a blaze of love our bodies press!
I 55
T H E C U C K O L D 'S S O N G
If this looks like a poem
I might as well warn you at the beginning
that it's not meant to be one.
I don't want to turn anything into poetry.
I know all about her part in it
but I'm not concerned with that right now.
This is between you and me.
Personally I don't give a damn who led who on:
in fact I wonder if I give a damn at all.
But a man's got to say something.
Anyhow you fed her 5 McKewan Ales,
took her to your room, put the right records on,
and in an hour or two it was done.
I know all about passion and honour
but unfortunately this had really nothing to do with
either:
oh there was passion I'm only too sure
and even a little honour
but the important thing was to cuckold Leonard Cohen.
Hell, I might just as well address this to the both of you:
I haven't time to write anything else.
·
I've got to say my prayers.
I've got to wait by the window.
I repeat: the important thing was to cuckold Leonard
Cohen.
I like that line because it's got my name in it.
What really makes me sick
is that everything goes on as it went before:
I'm still a sort of friend,
I'm still a sort of lover.
But not for long:
that's why I'm telling this to the two of you.
s6 I
The fact is I'm turning to gold, turning to gold.
It's a long process, they say,
it happens in stages.
This is to inform you that I've already turned to clay.
D E A D S O N G
As I lay dead
In my love-soaked bed,
Angels came to kiss my head.
I caught one gown
And wrestled her down
To be my girl in death town.
She will not fly.
She has promised to die.
What a clever corpse am II
I s7
M Y L A D Y C A N S L E E P
My lady can sleep
Upon a handkerchief
Or if it be Fall
Upon a fallen leaf.
I have seen the hunters
Kneel before her hem
Even in her sleep
She turns away from them.
The only gift they offer
Is their abiding grief-
1 pull out my pockets
For a handkerchief or leaf.
T R A V E L
Loving you, flesh to flesh, I often thought
Of travelling penniless to some mud throne
Where a master might instruct me how to plot
My life away from pain, to love alone
In the bruiseless embrace of stone and lake.
Lost in the fields of your hair I was never lost
Enough to lose a way I had to take;
Breathless beside your body I could not exhaust
The will that forbid me contract, vow,
Or promise, and often while you slept
I looked in awe beyond your beauty.
Now
I know why many men have stopped and wept
Half-way between the loves they leave and seek,
And wondered if travel leads them anywhere
Horizons keep the soft line of your cheek,
The windy sky's a locket for your hair.
I 59
I H A V E T W O B A R S O F S O A P
I have two bars of soap,
the fragrance of almond,
one for you and one for me.
Draw the bath,
we will wash each other.
I have no money,
I murdered the pharmacist.
And here's a jar of oil,
just like in the Bible.
Lie in my arms,
I'll make your flesh glisten.
I have no money,
I murdered the perfumer.
Look through the window
at the shops and people.
Tell me what you desire,
you'll have it by the hour.
I have no money,
I have no money.
6o I
C E L E B R A T I O N
When you kneel below me
and in both your hands
hold my manhood like a sceptre,
When you wrap your tongue
about the amber jewel
and urge my blessing,
I understand those Roman girls
who danced around a shaft of stone
and kissed it till the stone was warm.
Kneel, love, a thousand feet below me,
so far I can barely see your mouth and hands
perform the ceremony,
Kneel till I topple
