β
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Selected Poems, 1956-1968)
β
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)
β
We are all brokenβthatβs how the light gets in.
β
β
Ernest Hemingway
β
I don't remember
lighting this cigarette
and I don't remember
if I'm here alone
or waiting for someone.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Never make a decision when you need to pee.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
You go your way
I'll go your way too
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
Here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when youβre tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty .
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs)
β
Reality is one of the possibilities I cannot afford to ignore
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
I have tried in my way to be free.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
... i didn't fall in love of course
it's never up to you
but she was walking back and forth
and i was passing through
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
first of all nothing will happen
and a little later
nothing will happen again
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you'd like to act.
β
β
Bob Dylan
β
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Do not be a magician - be magic!
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)
β
The older I get, the surer I am that Iβm not running the show.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
We are not mad. We are human.We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs)
β
In My Secret Life"
"I saw you this morning,
you were moving so fast.
Can't seem to loosen my grip
On the past.
And I miss you so much,
there's no one in sight.
And we're still making love
In my secret life.
I smile when I am angry,
I cheat and I lie,
I do what I have to do
to get by,
In my secret life.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
I have often prayed for you
like this
Let me have her
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
a kite is a victim you are sure of.
you love it because it pulls.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
It doesn't matter what you do because it's going to happen anyway.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Selected Poems 1956-1968)
β
A heavy burden lifted from my soul,
I heard that love was out of my control.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs)
β
Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was, "Hallelujah.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Deprivation is the mother of poetry.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)
β
I'm planning a catastrophe.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)
β
Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
Anything I tell you is an alibi for something else."
Then let's be quiet together.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)
β
Love is a fire/It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
He knew that hair couldn't feel; he kissed her hair.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)
β
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs)
β
My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn't write
What the night pencilled in
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
How bitter were
the Prozac pills
of the last
few hundred mornings
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
My friends are gone and my hair is grey.
I ache in places I used to play.
And Iβm crazy for love but Iβm not coming on.
Iβm just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Dance Me to the End of Love (Art & Poetry))
β
You live your life as if it's real.......a thousand kisses deep
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Silence
And a deeper silence
When the crickets
Hesitate
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
I dreamed about you baby.
It was just the other night.
Most of you was naked
Ah, but some of you was light.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask.
If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask.
If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand.
If you want a partner in life take my hand.
I'm your man.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Like a bird on a wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free!!
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
We are ugly but we have the music.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Ah, grief makes us precise!
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
i would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former ss monsters
However since it is
new year's eve
and i have lip cancer
i will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me...
All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance,
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs)
β
She was made of flesh and eyelashes.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)
β
Friend, when you speak this carefully I know it is because you don't know what to say.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Your body will never be familiar.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)
β
My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terrors for one who remembers the name.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
The sweetest little song:
You go your way
I'll go your way too!
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Patti Smith, all dark, all romantic. When I say βromantic,β I mean a sensibility that sees everything, and has to express everything, and still doesnβt know what the fuck it is, it hurts that bad. It just madly tries to speak whatever it feels, and that can mean vast things. That sort of mentality can turn a sun-kissed orange into a flaming meteorite, and make it sound like that in a song.
β
β
Jeff Buckley
β
Dream after dream we all lie in each other's arms
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
A sip of wine, a cigarette,
And then itβs time to go.
I tidied up the kitchenette;
I tuned the old banjo.
Iβm wanted at the traffic-jam.
Theyβre saving me a seat.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Show me slowly what I only
know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs)
β
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed,
Everybody knows that the war is over,
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Leonard Cohen Collection)
β
And may my bronze name / touch always her thousand fingers / grow brighter with her weeping / until I am fixed like a galaxy / and memorized / in her secret and fragile skies.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Let Us Compare Mythologies)
β
You go to Heaven once you've been to Hell
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater
and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though Iβd
never been your lover
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Spice-Box of Earth)
β
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos...
So ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
Thatβs how the light gets in.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
I loved you when you opened like a lily to the heat; you see Iβm just another snowman standing in the rain and sleet who loved you with his frozen love, his second hand physique, with all he is and all he was a thousand kisses deep.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Love is the only engine of survival
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
..you wanted to be the Superman who was never Clark Kent
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
Itβs a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.
If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumors on our lips
it is because I hear a man climb stairs
and clear his throat outside our door.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
It doesn't matter how anything happens.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Favorite Game)
β
Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's closing time.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
I'm not a very nostalgic person. I don't really look at the past and summon up regrets, or self-congratulations, it just is not a mechanism that operates very strongly in me. So I neither have regrets nor occasions for self-congratulations.
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
I raise my glass to the Awful Truth,
Which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth,
Except to say it isn't worth a dime,
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice,
And it's once for the Devil and once for Christ
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
You should go
from place to place
recovering the poems
that have been written for you
to which you can affix your signature.
Don't discuss these matters
with anyone.
Retrieve. Retrieve.
When the basket is full
someone will appear
to whom you can present it.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
Hallelujah"
"Your faith was strong but you needed proof.
You saw her bathing on the roof.
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.
She tied you to a kitchen chair,
she broke your throne, and she cut your hair.
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah....
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
Undertow"
"I set out one night
When the tide was low
There were signs in the sky
But I did not know
I'd be caught in the grip
Of the undertow
Ditched on a beach
Where the sea hates to go
With a child in my arms
And a chill in my soul
And my heart the shape
Of a begging bowl
β
β
Leonard Cohen
β
It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a
real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but
one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and
changed into itself over and over.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
This is the tale of Magic Alex, the man who was everywhere: with Leonard Cohen in Hydra; in Crete with Joni Mitchell; in a Paris bathroom when Jimmy Morrison went down; working as a roadie setting up the Beatles last rooftop gig; an assistant to John and Yoko when they had a bed-in at the Amsterdam Hilton; with the Stones when they were charged for pissing against a wall; the first to find and save Dylan after the motorcycle accident; having it off with Mama Cass hours before she choked the big one; arranging the security at Altamont; at Haight-Ashbury with George Harrison and the Grateful Dead; and in the Japanese airport with McCartney after the dope rap. He was the guy Carly Simon was really singing about and the missing slice of βBye, Bye Miss American Pieβ.
β
β
Harry F. MacDonald (Magic Alex and the Secret History of Rock and Roll)
β
What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)
β
Now suzanne takes you hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From salvation army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For shes touched your perfect body with her mind.
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Songs of Leonard Cohen, Herewith: Music, Words and Photographs)
β
DEAR DIΒARY
You are greater than the Bible
And the ConΒferΒence of the Birds
And the UpΒanΒishads
All put toΒgethΒer
You are more seΒvere
Than the ScripΒtures
And HamΒmuraΒbiβs Code
More danΒgerΒous than Lutherβs paΒper
Nailed to the CatheΒdral door
You are sweetΒer
Than the Song of Songs
MightΒier by far
Than the Epic of GilΒgamesh
And braver
Than the Sagas of IceΒland
I bow my head in gratΒitude
To the ones who give their lives
To keep the seΒcret
The daiΒly seΒcret
UnΒder lock and key
Dear DiΒary
I mean no disΒreΒspect
But you are more subΒlime
Than any SaΒcred Text
SomeΒtimes just a list
Of my events
Is holiΒer than the Bill of Rights
And more inΒtense
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Book of Longing)
β
There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person's biochemical atmosphere more pyrotechnically than any deep, abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact. The poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic passion, let alone disclosing the inherent mystical qualities of the material world.
Cohen is a master of the quasi-surrealistic phrase, of the "illogical" line that speaks so directly to the unconscious that surface ambiguity is transformed into ultimate, if fleeting, comprehension: comprehension of the bewitching nuances of sex and bewildering assaults of culture. Undoubtedly, it is to his lyrical mastery that his prestigious colleagues now pay tribute. Yet, there may be something else. As various, as distinct, as rewarding as each of their expressions are, there can still be heard in their individual interpretations the distant echo of Cohen's own voice, for it is his singing voice as well as his writing pen that has spawned these songs.
It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher's stone. A voice marinated in kirschwasser, sulfur, deer musk and snow; bandaged with sackcloth from a ruined monastery; warmed by the embers left down near the river after the gypsies have gone.
It is a penitent's voice, a rabbinical voice, a crust of unleavened vocal toasts -- spread with smoke and subversive wit. He has a voice like a carpet in an old hotel, like a bad itch on the hunchback of love. It is a voice meant for pronouncing the names of women -- and cataloging their sometimes hazardous charms. Nobody can say the word "naked" as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been.
Finally, the actual persona of their creator may be said to haunt these songs, although details of his private lifestyle can be only surmised. A decade ago, a teacher who called himself Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh came up with the name "Zorba the Buddha" to describe the ideal modern man: A contemplative man who maintains a strict devotional bond with cosmic energies, yet is completely at home in the physical realm. Such a man knows the value of the dharma and the value of the deutschmark, knows how much to tip a waiter in a Paris nightclub and how many times to bow in a Kyoto shrine, a man who can do business when business is necessary, allow his mind to enter a pine cone, or dance in wild abandon if moved by the tune. Refusing to shun beauty, this Zorba the Buddha finds in ripe pleasures not a contradiction but an affirmation of the spiritual self. Doesn't he sound a lot like Leonard Cohen?
We have been led to picture Cohen spending his mornings meditating in Armani suits, his afternoons wrestling the muse, his evenings sitting in cafes were he eats, drinks and speaks soulfully but flirtatiously with the pretty larks of the street. Quite possibly this is a distorted portrait. The apocryphal, however, has a special kind of truth.
It doesn't really matter. What matters here is that after thirty years, L. Cohen is holding court in the lobby of the whirlwind, and that giants have gathered to pay him homage. To him -- and to us -- they bring the offerings they have hammered from his iron, his lead, his nitrogen, his gold.
β
β
Tom Robbins
β
-You know how to call me
although such a noise now
would only confuse the air
Neither of us can forget
the steps we danced
the words you stretched
to call me out of dust
Yes I long for you
not just as a leaf for weather
or vase for hands
but with a narrow human longing
that makes a man refuse
any fields but his own
I wait for you at an
unexpected place in your journey
like the rusted key
or the feather you do not pick up.-
-I WILL NEVER FIND THE FACES
FOR ALL GOODBYES I'VE MADE.-
For Anyone Dressed in Marble
The miracle we all are waiting for
is waiting till the Parthenon falls down
and House of Birthdays is a house no more
and fathers are unpoisoned by renown.
The medals and the records of abuse
can't help us on our pilgrimage to lust,
but like whips certain perverts never use,
compel our flesh in paralysing trust.
I see an orphan, lawless and serene,
standing in a corner of the sky,
body something like bodies that have been,
but not the scar of naming in his eye.
Bred close to the ovens, he's burnt inside.
Light, wind, cold, dark -- they use him like a bride.
I Had It for a Moment
I had it for a moment
I knew why I must thank you
I saw powerful governing men in black suits
I saw them undressed
in the arms of young mistresses
the men more naked than the naked women
the men crying quietly
No that is not it
I'm losing why I must thank you
which means I'm left with pure longing
How old are you
Do you like your thighs
I had it for a moment
I had a reason for letting the picture
of your mouth destroy my conversation
Something on the radio
the end of a Mexican song
I saw the musicians getting paid
they are not even surprised
they knew it was only a job
Now I've lost it completely
A lot of people think you are beautiful
How do I feel about that
I have no feeling about that
I had a wonderful reason for not merely
courting you
It was tied up with the newspapers
I saw secret arrangements in high offices
I saw men who loved their worldliness
even though they had looked through
big electric telescopes
they still thought their worldliness was serious
not just a hobby a taste a harmless affectation
they thought the cosmos listened
I was suddenly fearful
one of their obscure regulations
could separate us
I was ready to beg for mercy
Now I'm getting into humiliation
I've lost why I began this
I wanted to talk about your eyes
I know nothing about your eyes
and you've noticed how little I know
I want you somewhere safe
far from high offices
I'll study you later
So many people want to cry quietly beside you
β
β
Leonard Cohen (Flowers for Hitler)
β
A Kite is a Victim
A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.
A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.
A kite is the last poem you've written
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.
A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.
Gift
You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me
There are some men
There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names through time
Grave markers are not high enough
or green
and sons go far away to lose the fist
their fatherβs hand will always seem
I had a friend he lived and died
in mighty silence and with dignity
left no book son or lover to mourn.
Nor is this a mourning song
but only a naming of this mountain
on which I walk
fragrant, dark and softly white
under the pale of mist
I name this mountain after him.
-Believe nothing of me
Except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
I did not see any cities burn,
I heard no promises of endless night,
I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
Promise me that I will return.-
-When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.-
Song
I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater
and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I'd
never been your lover
-Reach into the vineyard of arteries for my heart.
Eat the fruit of ignorance and share with me the mist and
fragrance of dying.-
β
β
Leonard Cohen (The Spice-Box of Earth)