DANCE ME TO THE END OF LOVE
by Leonard Cohen
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We’re both of us beneath our love, we’re both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Leonard Cohen Is a world-renowned Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist.
Editor’s Note: This poem was by request. If you have a request of your own please feel free to post it as a comment. For me, the Leonard Cohen song that is pure poetry is Hallelujah, which is even more interesting for the many different versions of the lyrics in existence. I jumped at the opportunity to post this song today because it brings to light one of my favorite subject matters: Is music poetry? To me, the answer is yes, though it depends on the artist and on the piece. I do believe that poetry is an artful manipulation of language, so for a song to be poetry or an artist to be a poet I need lyrics that read, for me, like poetry. Bob Dylan tends to fall within this camp, as does Ani DiFranco. Of course there are countless others, and there are also pop songs that I am loathe to consider poetry, such as Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus songs. But poetry is subjective, and people view what is and isn’t poetry differently. What do you think? Are songs poems? Are lyricists poets?
Want to read more by and about Leonard Cohen?
LeonardCohen.com
Wikipedia
The Leonard Cohen Files
As It Ought To Be 
it’s tricky because poetry can be a Terebinth Tree or a desert (spring)ing into an oasis, and surely the symphony of a mockingbird zzz poetry…. so what differentiates poetry from song? Different nouns? Etymologies? With regard to specific songwriter/poets: Dylan’s work, definitely, Marc (sic) Knofler too. And Robert Hunter for The Dead … it’s endless. A Research project. Thanks for Leonard (piece), he’s saba (awesome)!
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A poet is someone
Who can pour Light into a cup
and raise it to nourish your
beautiful parched holy mouth.
~Hafiz
For me, Leonard Cohen is such a poet. Many thanks, Sivan 🙂
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Me encanta Leonard Cohen, y este poema es de lo más romantico. Debes estar enamorado.
Gracias.
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The first Ani Difranco song/poem that came to mind when I read your editors note..consider this a request
“Fuel”
They were digging a new foundation in Manhattan
And they discovered a slave cemetery there
May their souls rest easy
Now that lynching is frowned upon
And we’ve moved on to the electric chair
And I wonder who’s gonna be president, tweedle dum or tweedle dummer?
And who’s gonna have the big blockbuster box office this summer?
How about we put up a wall between houses and the highway
And you can go your way, and I can go my may
Except all the radios agree with all the tvs
And all the magazines agree with all the radios
And I keep hearing that same damn song everywhere I go
Maybe I should put a bucket over my head
And a marshmallow in each ear
And stumble around for
Another dumb-numb waiting for another hit song to appear
People used to make records
As in a record of an event
The event of people playing music in a room
Now everything is cross-marketing
Its about sunglasses and shoes
Or guns and drugs
You choose
We got it rehashed
We got it half-assed
We’re digging up all the graves
And we’re spitting on the past
And you can choose between the colors
Of the lipstick on the whores
Cause we know the difference between
The font of 20% more
And the font of teriyaki
You tell me
How does it… make you feel?
You tell me
What’s … real?
And they say that alcoholics are always alcoholics
Even when they’re as dry as my lips for years
Even when they’re stranded on a small desert island
With no place within 2,000 miles to buy beer
And I wonder
Is he different?
Is he different?
Has he changed? what’s he about?..
Or is he just a liar with nothing to lie about?
Am I headed for the same brick wall
Is there anything I can do about
Anything at all?
Except go back to that corner in Manhattan
And dig deeper, dig deeper this time
Down beneath the impossible pain of our history
Beneath unknown bones
Beneath the bedrock of the mystery
Beneath the sewage systems and the PATH train
Beneath the cobblestones and the water mains
Beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals
Beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels
Beneath everything I can think of to think about
Beneath it all, beneath all get out
Beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
There’s a fire just waiting for fuel
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nice choice. i can’t help but compare the two songs, which feels a bit like placing a ready-made next to a painting by Goya. still, if your mission is to “democratize discourse” (or by extension, art), why not? is there a hierarchy of values that makes one work a poem and another something else? there are poems which exist outside the academic canon but are no less poetic. at any rate, artists have been tweaking the boundaries between genres for generations (Symbolists, Dadaists, Beats, etc). well, I have another request for you, but i can wait my turn: Martin Espada’s “Imagine the Angels of Bread”:
This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year
that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.
This is the year that those
who swim the border’s undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight
of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.
If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.
So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread.
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