Let Us Compare Mythologies. Leonard Cohen

      

      Leonard Cohen began his artistic career in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies. He went on to publish twelve more books, including two celebrated novels, and gained worldwide recognition as an iconic singer-songwriter. He released fourteen studio albums, including three in the last years of his life, when he also became one of the most acclaimed arena-performing artists in the world.

      Among his numerous honours, he is the recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award 2010, the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature 2011, the inaugural New England PEN Award for Excellence in Lyrics 2012, the 2016 Juno Awards for Song of the Year and Album of the Year, and he has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the US Songwriters Hall of Fame. He died in November 2016.

      Also by Leonard Cohen

      POETRY

      The Spice-Box of Earth (1961)

      Flowers for Hitler (1964)

      Parasites of Heaven (1966)

      Selected Poems: 1956–1968 (1968)

      The Energy of Slaves (1972)

      Death of a Lady’s Man (1978)

      Book of Mercy (1984)

      Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (1993)

      Book of Longing (2006)

      The Flame (2018)

      FICTION

      The Favourite Game (1963)

      Beautiful Losers (1966)

      This Canons edition published in the UK in 2019 by Canongate Books Ltd,

      14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

      This book was first published by Contact Press in 1956

       canongate.co.uk

      This digital edition first published in 2019 by Canongate Books

      Copyright © Leonard Cohen, 1956

      The right of Leonard Cohen to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

      ISBN 978 1 78689 688 9

      eISBN 978 1 78689 689 6

      Book design by Five Seventeen

      To the memory of my father

      Nathan B. Cohen

      Contents

       Elegy

       For Wilf and His House

       The Song of the Hellenist

       Prayer for Messiah

       Rites

       Rededication

       Pioneers

       The Sparrows

       Item

       City Christ

       Song of Patience

       When This American Woman

       These Heroics

       Folk Song

       Song

       Friends

       Lovers

       The Warrior Boats

       Letter

       Pagans

       Song

       Prayer for Sunset

       Ballad

       Saint Catherine Street

       Ballad

       Summer Night

       The Flier

       Had We Nothing to Prove

       Satan in Westmount

       Fragment of Baroque

       Twilight

       To I . P . L .

       Poem

       Halloween Poem

       On Certain Incredible Nights

       Jingle

       The Fly

       Warning

       Les Vieux

       Story

       Saviours

       Exodus

       “Just The Worst Time”

       Beside The Shepherd

       Index of Titles

      “All right” he said. “Listen,” and read again, but only one stanza this time and closed the book and laid it on the table. “She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,” McCaslin said: “Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair.”

      “He’s talking about a girl,” he said.

      “He had to talk about something,” McCaslin said.

      The Bear, by William Faulkner

      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