Let Us Compare Mythologies

Leonard Cohen

• Publisher: Canongate Canons
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781786896889
• eBook ISBN: 9781786896896
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

First published in 1956 when he was twenty-two years old, Let Us Compare Mythologies is Leonard Cohen's first collection of poetry. It is an accomplished and passionate collection which demonstrates Cohen's remarkably assured voice, even as a young man.

An unprecedented debut published to immediate acclaim, new generations of readers will now rediscover not only the early work of one of our most beloved writers, but poetry that resonates loudly with relevance today.

ELEGY

Do not look for him

In brittle mountain streams:

They are too cold for any god;

And do not examine the angry rivers

For shreds of his soft body

Or turn the shore stones for his blood;

But in the warm salt ocean

He is descending through cliffs

Of slow green water

And the hovering coloured fish

Kiss his snow-bruised body

And build their secret nests

In his fluttering winding-sheet.

FOR WILF AND HIS HOUSE

When young the Christians told me

how we pinned Jesus

like a lovely butterfly against the wood,

and I wept beside paintings of Calvary

at velvet wounds

and delicate twisted feet.

But he could not hang softly long,

your fighters so proud with bugles,

bending flowers with their silver stain,

and when I faced the Ark for counting,

trembling underneath the burning oil,

the meadow of running flesh turned sour

and I kissed away my gentle teachers,

warned my younger brothers.

Among the young and turning-great

of the large nations, innocent

of the spiked wish and the bright crusade,

there I could sing my heathen tears

between the summersaults and chestnut battles,

love the distant saint

who fed his arm to flies,

mourn the crushed ant

and despise the reason of the heel.

Raging and weeping are left on the early road.

Now each in his holy hill

the glittering and hurting days are almost done.

Then let us compare mythologies.

I have learned my elaborate lie

of soaring crosses and poisoned thorns

and how my fathers nailed him

like a bat against a barn

to greet the autumn and late hungry ravens

as a hollow yellow sign.

THE SONG OF THE HELLENIST

For R.K.

Those unshadowed figures, rounded lines of men

who kneel by curling waves, amused by ornate birds—

If that had been the ruling way,

I would have grown long hairs for the corners of my mouth . . .

O cities of the Decapolis across the Jordan,

you are too great; our young men love you,

and men in high places have caused gymnasiums

to be built in Jerusalem.

I tell you, my people, the statues are too tall.

Beside them we are small and ugly,

blemishes on the pedestal.

My name is Theodotus, do not call me Jonathan.

My name is Dositheus, do not call me Nathaniel.

Call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor . . .

“Have you seen my landsmen in the museums,

the brilliant scholars with the dirty fingernails,

standing before the marble gods,

underneath the lot?”

Among straight noses, natural and carved,

I have said my clever things thought out before;

jested on the Protocols, the cause of war,

quoted “Bleistein with a Cigar.”

And in the salon that holds the city in its great window,

in the salon among the Herrenmenschen,

among the close-haired youth, I made them laugh

when the child came in:

“Come I need you for a Passover Cake.”

And I have touched their tall clean women,

thinking somehow they are unclean,

as scaleless fish.

They have smiled quietly at me,

and with their friends—

I wonder what they see.

O cities of the Decapolis,

call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor . . .

Dark women, soon I will not love you.

My children will boast of their ancestors at Marathon

and under the walls of Troy,

and Athens, my chiefest joy—

O call me Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor . . .

PRAYER FOR MESSIAH

His blood on my arm is warm as a bird

his heart in my hand is heavy as lead

his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

O send out the raven ahead of the dove

His life in my mouth is less than a man

his death on my breast is harder than stone

his eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

O send out the raven ahead of the dove

O send out the raven ahead of the dove

O sing from your chains where you’re chained in a cave

your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

your blood in my ballad ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Also by Leonard Cohen
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Elegy
• Index of Titles