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