Stranger Music

Leonard Cohen

STRANGER MUSIC

Leonard Cohen was born in Montreal in 1934. While attending McGill University, he formed a country-and-western trio called The Buckskin Boys and published his first book of poetry. His career spans nearly forty years, during which he has produced an impressive body of work: he has published nine books of poetry and two novels, and has made eleven records, including Various Positions, I’m Your Man, and, most recently, The Future.

BY LEONARD COHEN

BOOKS

Let Us Compare Mythologies 1956

The Spice-Box of Earth 1961

The Favourite Game 1963

Flowers for Hitler 1964

Beautiful Losers 1966

Parasites of Heaven 1966

Selected Poems, 1956–1968 1968

The Energy of Slaves 1972

Death of a Lady’s Man 1978

Book of Mercy 1984

Stranger Music 1993

RECORDS

Songs of Leonard Cohen 1967

Songs from a Room 1969

Songs of Love and Hate 1971

Live Songs 1972

New Skin for the Old Ceremony 1973

The Best of Leonard Cohen 1975

Death of a Ladies’ Man 1977

Recent Songs 1979

Various Positions 1984

I’m Your Man 1988

The Future 1992

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, NOVEMBER 1994

Copyright © 1993 by Leonard Cohen and Leonard

Cohen Stranger Music, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and subsequently by McClelland & Stewart, Inc., Toronto, in 1993.

Poems and prose excerpts were taken from books originally published by McClelland & Stewart, Inc., and are reprinted by permission of the author. Songs are copyright © by Leonard Cohen Stranger Music, Inc., and are reprinted by permission.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon edition as follows:

Cohen, Leonard, 1934–

Stranger music: selected poems and songs/Leonard Cohen. p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79468-0

I. Title.

PR9199.3.C57S74 1993

811’.54 — dc20 93—751

v3.1

To Adam and Lorca

CONTENTS

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Let Us Compare Mythologies

Poem

Letter

Lovers

Prayer for Messiah

When This American Woman

These Heroics

Warning

The Fly

The Spice-Box of Earth

As the Mist Leaves No Scar

Beneath My Hands

I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries

I Long to Hold Some Lady

Owning Everything

Song

For Anne

You Have the Lovers

Song for Abraham Klein

Song to Make Me Still

Summer Haiku

My Lady Can Sleep

Gift

I Wonder How Many People in This City

Travel

I Have Two Bars of Soap

The Cuckold’s Song

Morning Song

The Flowers That I Left in the Ground

A Kite Is a Victim

There Are Some Men

Isaiah

Flowers for Hitler

What I’m Doing Here

I Wanted to Be a Doctor

The Drawer’s Condition on November 28, 1961

The Invisible Trouble

Opium and Hitler

It Uses Us!

Heirloom

All There Is to Know about Adolph Eichmann

Sky

Hitler

The Failure of a Secular Life

Wheels, Fireclouds

The Music Crept by Us

Hydra 1960

Queen Victoria and Me

I Had It for a Moment

The Way Back

On Hearing a Name Long Unspoken

Style

Disguises

Cherry Orchards

Streetcars

Nothing I Can Lose

Front Lawn

The Big World

The Lists

Promise

For E.J.P.

Parasites of Heaven

One Night I Burned

I See You on a Greek Mattress

Snow Is Falling

Fingerprints

A Cross Didn’t Fall on Me

Songs of Leonard Cohen

Suzanne

Teachers

Winter Lady

So Long, Marianne

One of Us Cannot Be Wrong

Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye

Master Song

Sisters of Mercy

The Stranger Song

Selected Poems 1956–1968

A Person Who Eats Meat

Marita

This Is for You

The Reason I Write

You Do Not Have to Love Me

You Live Like a God

Beautiful Losers

Be with Me

What Is a Saint

A Great Feast in Quebec

Magic Is Alive

All Right, Edith

Believe Me, Edith

Songs From a Room

Story of Isaac

Lady Midnight

You Know Who I Am

Seems So Long Ago, Nancy

Bird on the Wire

Songs of Love and Hate

Joan of Arc

Avalanche

Diamonds in the Mine

Famous Blue Raincoat

The Energy of Slaves

Welcome to These Lines

The Only Poem

Portrait of a Girl

I Perceived the Outline of Your Breasts

The Escape

I Am Dying

1967

Ugly in My Own Eyes

There Are No Traitors

I Left a Woman

Invisible Tonight

Love Is a Fire

You Tore Your Shirt

Threat

Dark at Four O’clock

Far from the Soil

My Room

The Road to Larissa

I Am Punished

Aquarian Age

The Killers

Purest of Occasions

You Went to Work

Any System

One of These Days

I Try to Keep in Touch

My Greed

Your Eyes

This Is War

I’d like to Read

The Poems Don’t Love Us Any More

Stay

Etiquette

A Veil

A Future Night

Morocco

Song for My Assassin

The Wrong Man

One

This Is My Voice

New Skin for The Old Ceremony

Chelsea Hotel

Take This Longing

Field Commander Cohen

There Is a War

Is This What You Wanted

Why Don’t You Try

I Tried to Leave You

Who by Fire?

A Singer Must Die

Death of A Ladies’ Man

Memories

Paper-Thin Hotel

True Love Leaves No Traces

I Left a Woman Waiting

Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On

Death of A Lady’s Man

I Knelt Beside a Stream

The Café

Commentary – The Café 222

The Change

Commentary – The Change

Death to This Book

Commentary – Death to This Book

Another Room

Commentary – Another Room

Death of a Lady’s Man

My Wife and I

Commentary – My Wife and I

The News You Really Hate

Commentary – The News You Really Hate

I Decided

The Beetle

Commentary – The Beetle

The Altar

Commentary – The Altar

This Marriage

Commentary – This Marriage

Commentary II -This Marriage

The Photograph

It’s Probably Spring

Commentary – It’s Probably Spring

Another Family

The Asthmatic

Commentary – The Asthmatic

A Woman’s Decision

I Bury My Girlfriend

A Different Drum

A Working Man

Commentary – A Working Man

The Unclean Start

Angelica

The Next One

A Marvellous Woman

The Event

You Have No Form

The Dream

I Like the Way You Opposed Me

Beside My Son

Commentary – Beside My Son

She Has Given Me the Bullet

Commentary – She Has Given Me the Bullet

The Good Fight

The Dove

The Rose

Not Going Back

Montreal

French and English

O Wife Unmasked

The Window

Your Death

Petitions

The Rebellion

The Price of This Book

Roshi

This Wretch

Hurry to Your Dinner

Commentary – Hurry to Your Dinner 279

Slowly I Married Her

The Transmission

End of My Life in Art

Roshi Again

How to Speak Poetry

Commentary – How to Speak Poetry

The Politics of This Book

You’re Not Supposed to Be Here

Final Examination

Commentary – Final Examination

Recent Songs

Came So Far for Beauty

The Window

Our Lady of Solitude

The Gypsy Wife

The Traitor

The Guests

Ballad of the Absent Mare

Book of Mercy

I Stopped to Listen

When I Left the King

I Heard My Soul Singing

Sit Down, Master

In the Eyes of Men

Blessed Are You

You Have Sweetened Your Word

I Draw Aside the Curtain

Friend, When You Speak

My Teacher

Israel

You Who Pour Mercy into Hell

When I Have Not Rage

We Cry Out

You Who Question Souls

It Is All Around Me

It Is to You I Turn

Holy Is Your Name

Not Knowing Where to Go

All My Life

I Lost My Way

Various Positions

Dance Me to the End of Love

Coming Back to You

The Captain

If It Be Your Will

The Night Comes On

Hallelujah

I’m Your Man

First We Take Manhattan

Take This Waltz

Ain’t No Cure for Love

I’m Your Man

I Can’t Forget

Everybody Knows

The Tower of Song

The Future

Democracy

The Future

Anthem

Light as the Breeze

Closing Time

Waiting for the Miracle

Uncollected Poems

To a Fellow Student

Fragment