Fifteen Poems

Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen’s artistic career began in 1956 with the publication of his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies. He has published two novels, The Favorite Game and Beautiful Losers, and eleven books of poetry, including Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, Book of Longing, and Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs. He has released fourteen studio albums, the most recent of which, You Want It Darker, was released in 2016. Cohen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, and was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize in 2011. Mr. Cohen died in 2016.

ALSO BY LEONARD COHEN

BOOKS

Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs (2011)

Book of Longing (2006)

Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs (1993)

Book of Mercy (1984)

Death of a Lady’s Man (1978)

The Energy of Slaves (1972)

Selected Poems, 1956–1968 (1968)

Parasites of Heaven (1966)

Beautiful Losers (1966)

Flowers for Hitler (1964)

The Favourite Game (1963)

The Spice-Box of Earth (1961)

Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956)

ALBUMS

Popular Problems (2014)

Old Ideas (2012)

Dear Heather (2004)

Ten New Songs (2001)

The Future (1992)

I’m Your Man (1988)

Various Positions (1984)

Recent Songs (1979)

Death of a Ladies’ Man (1977)

The Best of Leonard Cohen (1975)

New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1973)

Live Songs (1972)

Songs of Love and Hate (1971)

Songs from a Room (1969)

Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)

Fifteen Poems

Leonard Cohen

A Vintage Short

Vintage Books
A Division of Random House LLC
New York

FIRST VINTAGE EBOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2014
Copyright © 1993 by Leonard Cohen and Leonard Cohen Stranger Music, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 by Old Ideas LLC

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House company. Originally published as an eShort by Everyman’s Library, a division of Random House LLC, New York, in 2012

Vintage Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for Fifteen Poems is available from the Library of Congress.

Vintage eShort ISBN: 978-0-307-96168-6

Cover art by Leonard Cohen.
Cover design by Carol Devine Carson.

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1_r3

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Also by Leonard Cohen

Title Page

Copyright

Letter

When This American Woman

These Heroics

Beneath My Hands

I Long to Hold Some Lady

Her hand in sand, no. 1

When I Uncovered Your Body

Travel

You Have the Lovers

You can’t emerge

The Poems Don’t Love Us Anymore

On Hearing a Name Long Unspoken

The background singers

Death of a Lady’s Man

Follow me

The News You Really Hate

Not cruel enough

I Draw Aside the Curtain

The Night Comes On

The Embrace

Torn

LETTER

How you murdered your family

means nothing to me

as your mouth moves across my body

And I know your dreams

of crumbling cities and galloping horses