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.”

“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.”

“Don't call yourself a secret unless you mean to keep it.”

“-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.-..."

“Silence 

And a deeper silence 

When the crickets 

Hesitate”

Leonard Cohen

Stories of the street

The stories of the street are mine
The Spanish voices laugh
The Cadillacs go creeping down
Through the night and the poison gas

I lean from mu window sill
In this old hotel I chose.
Yes, one hand on my suicide
And one hand on the rose.

I know you've heard it's over now
And war must surely come,
The cities they are broke in half
And the middle men are gone.

But let me ask you one more time
O children of the dust,
These hunters who are shrieking now
Do they speak for us?

And where do all these highways go
Now that we are free?
Why are the armies marching still
That were coming home to me?

O lady with your legs so fine
O stranger at your wheel
You are locked into your suffering
And your pleasures are the seal.

The age of lust is giving birth
But both the parents ask the nurse
To tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass

Now the infant with his cord
is hauled in like a kite
And one eye filled with blueprints
One eye filled with night

O come with me my little one
And we will find that farm
And grow us grass and apples there
To keep all the animals warm

And if by chance I wake at night
And I ask you who I am
O take me to the slaughter house
I will wait there with the lamb.

With one hand on a hexagram
And one hand on a girl
I balance on a wishing well
That all men call the world

We are so small between the stars
So large against the sky
And lost among the subway crowds
I try to catch your eye

Leonard Cohen

Bird on a Circus

Like a baby, stillborn,
like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.

Like a worm on a hook,

like a knight from some old fashioned book

I have saved all my ribbons for thee.

Like a bird on the wire,

like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free.

Leonard Cohen

The Book

The Book

I can’t make the hills

The system is shot

(...)

I followed the course

From chaos to art

Desire the horse

Depression the cart

I sailed like a swan

I sank like a rock

But time is long gone

Past my laughing stock

My page was too white

My ink was too thin

The day wouldn’t write

What the night pencilled in

My animal howls

My angel’s upset

But I’m not allowed

A trace of regret

(...)

Leonard Cohen