I Long To Hold Some Lady

I long to hold some lady
For my love is far away,
And will not come tomorrow
And was not here today.

There is no flesh so perfect
As on my lady's bone,
And yet it seems so distant
When I am all alone:

As though she were a masterpiece
In some castled town,
That pilgrims come to visit
And priests to copy down.

Alas, I cannot travel
To a love I have so deep
Or sleep too close beside
A love I want to keep.

But I long to hold some lady,
For flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
Each night beside my feet.

-- Leonard Cohen (from "The Spice Box of Earth")

Waiting for Marianne

I have lost a telephone
with your smell in it


I am living beside the radio
all the stations at once
but I pick out a Polish lullaby
I pick it out of the static
it fades I wait I keep the beat
it comes back almost asleep

Did you take the telephone
knowing I'd sniff it immoderately
maybe heat up the plastic
to get all the crumbs of your breath

and if you won't come back
how will you phone to say
you won't come back
so that I could at least argue

-- Leonard Cohen (from "Flowers for Hitler")

The Genius

For you
I will be a ghetto jew
and dance
and put white stockings
on my twisted limbs
and poison wells
across the town


For you
I will be an apostate jew
and tell the Spanish priest
of the blood vow
in the Talmud
and where the bones
of the child are hid


For you
I will be a banker jew
and bring to ruin
a proud old hunting king
and end his line


For you
I will be a Broadway jew
and cry in theatres
for my mother
and sell bargain goods
beneath the counter


For you
I will be a doctor jew
and search
in all the garbage cans for foreskins
to sew back again


For you
I will be a Dachau jew
and lie down in lime
with twisted limbs
and bloated pain
no mind can understand

-- Leonard Cohen (from "The Spice-Box of Earth")