Leonard Cohen - Book of Mercy

BY LEONARD COHEN

FICTION

The Favourite Game (1963)
Beautiful Losers (1966)

POETRY

Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956)
The Spice-Box of Earth (1961)
Flowers for Hitler (1964)
Parasites of Heaven (1966)
Selected Poems, 19561968 (1968)
The Energy of Slaves (1972)
Death of a Ladys Man (1978)
Book of Mercy (1984)
Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (1993)
Book of Longing (2006)

ALBUMS

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)
Im Your Man (1988)
The Future (1992)
Cohen Live (1994)
More Best of (1997)
Field Commander Cohen (2001)
Ten New Songs (2001)
The Essential Leonard Cohen (2002)
Dear Heather (2004)
Live in London (2009)

for my teacher

I STOPPED TO LISTEN, BUT he did not come. I began again with a sense of loss. As this sense deepened I heard him again. I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance. This was a strategy, and didnt work at all. Much time, years were wasted in such a minor mode. I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields. Haltingly he moves toward his throne. Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing. In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, the court is established on beams of golden symmetry, and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.

W HEN I LEFT THE KING I began to rehearse what I would say to the world: long rehearsals full of revisions, imaginary applause, humiliations, edicts of revenge. I grew swollen as I conspired with my ambition, I struggled, I expanded, and when the term was up, I gave birth to an ape. After some small inevitable misunderstanding, the ape turned on me. Limping, stumbling, I fled back to the swept courtyards of the king. Where is your ape? the king demanded. Bring me your ape. The work is slow. The ape is old. He clowns behind his bars, imitating our hands in the dream. He winks at my official sense of urgency. What king, he wants to know. What courtyard? What highway?

I HEARD MY SOUL SINGING behind a leaf, plucked the leaf, but then I heard it singing behind a veil. I tore the veil, but then I heard it singing behind a wall. I broke the wall, and I heard my soul singing against me. I built up the wall, mended the curtain, but I could not put back the leaf. I held it in my hand and I heard my soul singing mightily against me. This is what its like to study without a friend.

A FTER SEARCHING AMONG the words, and never finding ease, I went to you, I asked you to gladden my heart. My prayer divided against itself, I was ashamed to have been deceived again, and bitterly, in the midst of loud defeat, I went out myself to gladden the heart. It was here that I found my will, a fragile thing, starving among ferns and women and snakes. I said to my will, Come, let us make ourselves ready to be touched by the angel of song, and suddenly I was once again on the bed of defeat in the middle of the night, begging for mercy, searching among the words. With the two shields of bitterness and hope, I rose up carefully, and I went out of the house to rescue the angel of song from the place where she had chained herself to her nakedness. I covered her nakedness with my will, and we stood in the kingdom that shines toward you, where Adam is mysteriously free, and I searched among the words for words that would not bend the will away from you.

L ET ME REST, HE CRIED from the panic at the top of his heap of days. Let me rest on the day of rest, he entreated from the throne of unemployment. This king is heavy in my arms, I cant hold up the Pharaoh any more. He fastened his collar to the darkness so he couldnt breathe, and he opened the book in anger to make his payment to the law. An angel, who had no intrinsic authority, said, You have sealed every gate but this one; therefore, here is a little light commensurate with your little courage. His shame climbed up itself to find a height from which to spill. Then there was a sweeter saying in a stiller voice: I do not put my trust in man, nor do I place reliance on an angel. Immediately the Torah sang to him, and touched his hair, and for a moment, as a gift to serve his oldest memory, he wore the weightless crown, the crown that lifts the weight away, he wore it till his heart could say, How precious is the heritage! The crown that leaps up from the letters, a crown like dew that gives the grass to drink beads out of the darkness, the mothers kiss at the beginning of the war, the fathers hand that lets the forehead shine, the crown that raises up no man a king above his company. Lead me deep into your Sabbath, let me sit beneath the mighty ones whom you have crowned forever, and let me study how they rest.

S IT DOWN, MASTER, ON this rude chair of praises, and rule my nervous heart with your great decrees of freedom. Out of time you have taken me to do my daily task. Out of mist and dust you have fashioned me to know the numberless worlds between the crown and the kingdom. In utter defeat I came to you and you received me with a sweetness I had not dared to remember. Tonight I come to you again, soiled by strategies and trapped in the loneliness of my tiny domain. Establish your law in this walled place. Let nine men come to lift me into their prayer so that I may whisper with them: Blessed be the name of the glory of the kingdom forever and forever.

I PUSHED MY BODY FROM one city to another, one rooftop to another, to see a woman bathing. I heard myself grunt. I saw my fingers glisten. Then the exile closed around me. Then the punishment began; a small aimless misery, not in the heart, in the throat, then the removal of the body, the birds singing to a treasure of garbage, then world amnesia, a ghost bathing and shitting. Then I was judged by the face of one I tricked. Then the fear of justice. Then, for the ten thousandth time, the reality of sin. Then the Law shining, then the memory of what it was, too far, too clean to be grasped. Then I longed to long for you again, to know the ache of separation. How long must I be uninhabited by a soul? How long sustain the mutiny of this denial? O master of my breath, create a man around these nostrils, and gather my heart toward the gravity of your name. Form me again with an utterance and open my mouth with your praise. There is no life but in affirming you, no world to walk on but the one which you create. Forgive me with these hours and this midnight. Give this thought a master, and this ghost a stone. And do not let the demons boast about your mercy.

I N THE EYES OF MEN HE falls, and in his own eyes too. He falls from his high place, he trips on his achievement. He falls to you, he falls to know you. It is sad, they say. See his disgrace, say the ones at his heel. But he falls radiantly toward the light to which he falls. They cannot see who lifts him as he falls, or how his falling changes, and he himself bewildered till his heart cries out to bless the one who holds him in his falling. And in his fall he hears his heart cry out, his heart explains why he is falling, why he had to fall, and he gives over to the fall. Blessed are you, clasp of the falling. He falls into the sky, he falls into the light, none can hurt him as he falls. Blessed are you, shield of the falling. Wrapped in his fall, concealed within his fall, he finds the place, he is gathered in. While his hair streams back and his clothes tear in the wind, he is held up, comforted, he enters into the place of his fall. Blessed are you, embrace of the falling, foundation of the light, master of the human accident.