Skip to main content
Forums Home
Illustration of people sitting and standing

New here?

Chat with other people who 'Get it'

with health professionals in the background to make sure everything is safe and supportive.

Register

Have an account?
Login

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Social Spaces

SimpleAsThis
Senior Contributor

THE BOOK OF LONGING - By Leonard Cohen

This is my favourite book at the moment and has been for quite a few months. 'The Book of Longing' is a collection of poems from different eras of L. Cohens' life and some are mind blowing...

So I've started this thread to share some of my favourites with you all...

 

 

Pg. 34 - MOVING INTO A PERIOD

We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger. People will want to obey the voice of Authority, and many strange constructs of just what Authority is will arise in every mind. The family will appear again as the Foundation, much honoured, much praised, but those of us who have been ierced by other possibilities, we will merely go through the motions, albeit the motions of love. The public yearning for Order will invite stubborn uncomprimising persons to impose it. The sadness of the zoo will fall upon society.

You and I, who year for blameless intimacy, we will be unwilling to speak even the first words of inquisitive delight, for fear of reprisals. Everything desperate will live behind a joke. But I swear that I will stand within the range of your perfume.

How severe seems the moon tonight, like the face of an Iron Maiden, instead of the usual indistinct idiot.

If you think Freud is dishonoured now, and Einstein, and Hemmingway, just wait and see what is to be done with all the white hair, by those who come after me.

But there will be a Cross, a sign, that some will understand; a secret meeting, a warning, a Jerusalem hidden in Jeruselam. I will be wearing white clothes, as usual, and I will enter The Innermost Place as I have done generation upon generation, to entreat, to plead, to justify. I will enter the chamber of the Bride and the Bridegroom, and no one will follow me.

Have no doubt, in the near future we will be seeing and hearing much more of this sort of thing from people like myself.

 

3 REPLIES 3

Re: THE BOOK OF LONGING - By Leonard Cohen

PG 191/192 - The Great Divide

I never liked the way you loved

so devious, so dated

but still I fasted like a monk

and prayed to see you naked.

 

I'd see you hurting everyone

a government of suffering

I'd tell myself 'thy will be done

my will it counts for nothing'.

 

I drank a lot I lost my job

I lived like nothing mattered

and you, you never came across

you never even answered.

 

It was a blind and broken time

and kindness was forbidden

I guess I tried to hitch a ride

from acid to religion.

 

But every guiding light was gone

and every good direction

the book of love I read was wrong

it had a happy ending.

 

But when the system had been shocked

beyond all recognition

the simple things that I'd forgot

resumed their sweet position.

 

I thought I saw you with a child

I thought I heard you weeping

and all the garden round you wild

and safely in your keeping.

 

I dont recall what happened next

I kept you at a distance

but tangled in the know of sex

my punishment was lifted.

 

Your remedies beneath my hand

your fingers in my hair

the kisses on our lips began

that ended everywhere.

 

And when I gathered up to leave

you drew me to your side

to be like Adam was to Eve

before the great divide.

 

And fastened here we cannot move

except to one another

we spread and drown as lillies do

from nowhere to the centre.

 

And here I cannot lift a hand

to trace the lines of beauty

but lines are traced and love is is glad

to come and go so freely.

 

And here no sin can be confessed

no sinner be forgiven

it' written that the law must rest

before the law is written.

 

And here the silence is erased

the background all dismantled

your beauty cannot be compared

no mirror here, no shadow.

 

But now it comes, a grazing wind

aimless and serene

it wounds me as I part your lips

it wounds us in between.

 

And now the wars can start anew

the torture and the laughter

we cry aloud, as humans do

before the truth, and after.

 

I don't know how it's going to end

you always left that open

but oh, you are the only friend

I never thought of knowing.

 

 

 

 

 

Re: THE BOOK OF LONGING - By Leonard Cohen

PG ONE - THE BOOK OF LONGING

I can't make the hills

Re: THE BOOK OF LONGING - By Leonard Cohen

Page 56-57 - A thousand kisses deep.

 

1 -

You came to me this morning

and you handled me like meat

you'd have to be a man

to know how good that feels, how sweet

my mirror twin my next of kin

I'd know you in my sleep

and who but you would take me in

a thousand kisses deep.

 

I loved you when you opened

like a lily to the heat

I'm 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.

 

I know you had to lie to me

I know you had to cheat

to pose all hot and hide behind

the veils of sheer deciet

our perfect porn aristocrat

so elegant and cheap

I'm old but I'm still into that

a thousand kisses deep.

 

And I'm still working with the wine

still dancing cheek to cheek

the band is playing Auld Lang Syne

the heart will not retreat

I ran with Diz and Dante

I never had their sweep

but once or twice they let me play

a thousand kisses deep.

 

The autumn slipped across your skin

got something in my eye

a light that doesnt need to live

and doesn't need to die

a riddle in the book of love

obscure and obsolete

till witnessed here in time and blood

a thousand kisses deep.

 

I'm good at love I'm good at hate

it's in between I freeze

been working out but it's too late

it's been too late for years

but you look fine you really do

the pride of Boogie Street

somebody must have died for you

a thousand kisses deep.

 

I loved you when you opened

like a lily to the heat

I'm just another snowman

standing in the rain and sleet

but you dont need to hear me now

and every word I speak

it counts against me anyhow

a thousand kisses deep.

 

2.

The ponies run the girls are young

the odds are there to beat

you win a while and then it's done

your little winning streak

and summoned now to deal

with your invincible defeat

you live your life as if its real

a thousand kisses deep.

 

I'm turning tricks I'm getting fixed

I'm back on Boogie Street

you lose your grip and then you slip

into the masterpiece

and maybe I had miles to drive

and promises to keep

you ditch it all to stay alive

a thousand kisses deep.

 

Confined to sex we pressed against

the limits of the sea

i saw there were no oceans left

for scavengers like me

I made it to the forward deck

I blessed our remnant fleet

and then consented to be wrecked

a thousand kisses deep.

 

I'm turning tricks I'm getting fixed

I'm back in Boogie Street

I guess they won't exchange the gifts

that you were meant to keep

and sometimes when the night is slow

the wretched and the meek

we gather up our hearts and go

a thousand kisses deep.

 

And fragrant is the thought of you

The file on you complete

Except what we forgot to do

A thousand kisses deep.

 

 

Illustration of people sitting and standing

New here?

Chat with other people who 'Get it'

with health professionals in the background to make sure everything is safe and supportive.

Register

Have an account?
Login

For urgent assistance