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Leonard Cohen The Spice-Box of Earth by the same author poetry SELECTED POEMS 1956-68 FLOWERS FOR HITLER THE ENERGY OF SLAVES novels BEAUTIFUL LOSERS THE FAVOURITE GAME Leonard Cohen The Spice-Box of Earth Jonathan Cape Thirty Bedford Square London FIRST PUBLISHED 1961 FIRST PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN 1973 REPRINTED 1973 COPYRIGHT (c) 1961 BY LEONARD COHEN JONATHAN CAPE LTD,30 BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON WCI ISBN Hardback 0 224 00648 7 Paperback 0 224 00649 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Canadian Broadcasting Corporation The Queen's Quarterly Prism Saturday Review Pan-ic The McGill Chapbook Tamarack Review Money from the Canada Council bought me the time to complete this and other books. I wish to thank all those concerned. PRINTED AND BOUND IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY (THE CHAUCER PRESS) LTD BUNGAY, SUFFOLK PAPER MADE BY JOHN DICKINSON & CO. LTD Contents 9 A Kite Is a Victim 10 After the Sabbath Prayers 11 Gift 12 The Flowers that I Left in the Ground 14 If It Were Spring 16 There Are Some Men 17 You All in White 19 I Wonder How Many People in This City 20 It Is Late Afternoon 22 An Orchard of Shore Trees 24 Go by Brooks 25 Before the Story 27 Alone the Master and the Slave Embrace 28 Twelve o'Clock Chant 29 To a Teacher 30 I Have Not Lingered in European Monasteries 31 It Swings, Jocko 33 Credo 35 Sing to Fish, Embrace the Beast 36 Inquiry into the Nature of Cruelty 37 You Have the Lovers 39 When I Uncovered Your Body 40 The Adulterous Wives of Solomon 41 The Sleeping Beauty 42 Owning Everything 44 Song to Make Me Still 45 The Priest Says Goodbye 47 A Poem to Detain Me 49 Angels 50 The Cuckold's Song 52 Morning Song 53 The Unicorn Tapestries 55 The Boy's Beauty 56 The Girl Toy 57 Dead Song 58 Call You Grass 59 My Lady Can Sleep 60 Travel 61 I Have Two Bars of Soap 62 Brighter than Our Sun 63 Celebration 64 As the Mist Leaves No Scar 65 Beneath My Hands 67 I Long to Hold Some Lady 68 Now of Sleeping 70 Song 71 Song 72 For Anne 73 Last Dance at the Four Penny 75 Song for Abraham Klein 76 Good Brothers 77 Summer Haiku 78 Priests 1957 79 Out of the Land of Heaven 81 Absurd Prayer 82 Prayer of My Wild Grandfather 83 Isaiah 86 The Genius 88 Lines from My Grandfather's Journal This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandmother MRS LYON COHEN and to the memory of my grandfather RABBI SOLOMON KLINITSKY A Kite Is a Victim A kite is a victim you are sure of. You love it because it pulls gentle enough to call you master, strong enough to call you fool; because it lives like a desperate trained falcon in the high sweet air, and you can always haul it down to tame it in your drawer. A kite is a fish you have already caught in a pool where no fish come, so you play him carefully and long, and hope he won't give up, or the wind die down. A kite is the last poem you've written, so you give it to the wind, but you don't let it go until someone finds you something else to do. A kite is a contract of glory that must be made with the sun, so you make friends with the field the river and the wind, then you pray the whole cold night before, under the travelling cordless moon, So make you worthy and lyric and pure. After the Sabbath Prayers After the Sabbath prayers The Baal Shem's butterfly Followed me down the hill. Now the Baal Shem is dead These hundreds of years And a butterfly ends its life In three flag-swept days. So this was a miracle, Dancing down all these wars and truces Yellow as a first-day butterfly, Nothing of time or massacre In its bright flutter. Now the sharp stars are in the sky And I am shivering as I did last night, And the wind is not warmer For the yellow butterfly Folded somewhere on a sticky leaf And moving like a leaf itself. And how truly great A miracle this is, that I, Who this morning saw the Baal Shem's butterfly Doing its glory in the sun, Should spend this night in darkness, Hand