The Official Leonard Cohen Site

20.June.2012

WHEN I UNCOVERED YOUR BODY

When I uncovered your body
I thought shadows fell deceptively,
urging memories of perfect rhyme.
I thought I could bestow beauty
like a benediction and that your half-dark flesh
would answer to the prayer.
I thought I understood your face
because I had seen it painted twice
or a hundred times, or kissed it
when it was carved in stone. With only a breath, a vague turning,
you uncovered shadows
more deftly than I had flesh,
and the real and violent proportions of your body
made obsolete old treaties of excellence,
measures and poems,
and clamoured with a single challenge of personal beauty,
which cannot be interpreted or praised:
it must be met.

– The poem “When I Uncovered Your Body” from Fifteen Poems by Leonard Cohen published in ”VALENTINE’S DAY POEM: Canadian Poet, Songwriter, Artist Leonard Cohen: ‘When I Uncovered Your Body’,” Huntington News, February 14, 2012. (via leonardcohenminute)
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19.June.2012

leonardcohenminute: Leonard Cohen performing “The Butcher” in Toronto in 1975. Video uploaded by messalina79. Check out her many rare Leonard Cohen videos and her Adam Cohen videos on her Channel. Other performances of “The Butcher” can be found on ...

leonardcohenminute:

Leonard Cohen performing “The Butcher” in Toronto in 1975. Video uploaded by messalina79. Check out her many rare Leonard Cohen videos and her Adam Cohen videos on her Channel.

Other performances of “The Butcher” can be found on the Speaking Cohen Channel.
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19.June.2012

I look up. There you are, standing in your blue between a robe of frozen water and the black winter bark. I kneel down with the rusted stars, another ambition-crazed animal brought down gracefully to the forest floor, and whoever was the girl under my fingernails, she stands up in her blue frozen waterfall with a baby made of dust…

– From the commentary on the poem “Across the Street” from Death of a Lady’s Man by Leonard Cohen (via leonardcohenminute)
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