Suzanne -- Leonard Cohen

(Poem #116) Suzanne Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night beside her And you know that she's half crazy But that's why you want to be there And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China And just when you mean to tell her That you have no love to give her Then she gets you on her wavelength And she lets the river answer That you've always been her lover And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For you've touched her perfect body with your mind. And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said "All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them" But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone And you want to travel with him And you want to travel blind And you think maybe you'll trust him For he's touched your perfect body with his mind. Now Suzanne takes your hand And she leads you to the river She is wearing rags and feathers From Salvation Army counters And the sun pours down like honey On our lady of the harbour And she shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed There are children in the morning They are leaning out for love And they will lean that way forever While Suzanne holds the mirror And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that you can trust her For she's touched your perfect body with her mind. -- Leonard Cohen

Dylan's only serious challenger for the title of greatest popular
lyricist ever is a Canadian singer-songwriter-poet named Leonard Cohen.
Who happens to be a genius. Absolutely.

Cohen started his career as a poet and writer; indeed, he finds
prominent mention in any number of anthologies of contemporary verse,
while his second novel prompted the reviewer of the Boston Globe to say
'James Joyce is alive and well and living under the name of Leonard
Cohen'. But when barely getting into his stride as a writer, he switched
to performance; armed with a guitar and minimalistic (yet poignant)
tunes, he hit home with a series of impassioned, truthful songs. He
concentrated on exploring relationships - 'the battles of the boudoirs'
- yet he was never out of touch with the social context of his lyrics;
songs like "Please don't pass me by" (a stunning 14-minute
improvisation, which can be found on the album "Cohen Live") and "First
we take Manhattan" (from "I'm your man") stand out as the defining
classics of his genre.

Todays' poem/song grows on you. Cohen himself once described it as being
'the best song he'd ever written', and looking at the simple, frank
lyrics, it's not hard to see why. Just read it aloud several times, or
(better yet) listen to it... beautiful.

thomas.

There are lots of Cohen websites out there (and I won't even mention the
number of Bob Dylan sites floating around in the ether :-)), but I think
the most comprehensive one is http://nebula.simplenet.com/cohen/

For an interview with the Suzanne of the title, go to
[broken link] http://nebula.simplenet.com/cohen/verdal.html

For a rather gushingly written but nonetheless comprehensive Cohen
biography, go to
[broken link] http://nebula.simplenet.com/cohen/yourman.html

And finally, many thanks to Movin Miranda, Rajeev Chakravarthy and
Sheetal Bahl for their suggestions for poems to run this week.

Next week: Aboriginal Poetry.