Let Us Compare Mythologies. Leonard Cohen

      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 collapses the grave

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

      your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love

      your heart in my hand is heavy as lead

      your blood on my arm is warm as a bird

      O break from your branches a green branch of love

      after the raven has died for the dove

RITES

      Bearing gifts of flowers and sweet nuts

      the family came to watch the eldest son,

      my father; and stood about his bed

      while he lay on a blood-sopped pillow,

      his heart half rotted

      and his throat dry with regret.

      And it seemed so obvious, the smell so present,

      quite so necessary,

      but my uncles prophesied wildly,

      promising life like frantic oracles;

      and they only stopped in the morning,

      after he had died

      and I had begun to shout.

REDEDICATION

      A painful rededication, this Spring,

      like the building of cathedrals between wars,

      and masons at decayed walls;

      and we are almost too tired to begin again

      with miracles and leaves

      and lingering on steps in sudden sun;

      tired by the way isolated drifts lie melting,

      like hulks of large fish rotting far upbeach;

      the disinterested scrape of shovels

      collecting sand from sidewalks, destroying streams;

      and school-children in streetcars,

      staring out, astonished.

      We had learned a dignity