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Leonard Cohen — Book of Mercy “I,8”
00:16:34
Have you ever watched, in awe, as a skilled gymnast or skater lifts off and completes a dizzying number of revolutions in less than a second before landing safely back down? That’s how you may feel upon reading the great Leonard Cohen’s urgent, dreamlike poem “I, 8” from Book of Mercy. In his telling of a man’s fall “from his high place” into “disgrace”, Cohen sends us on a short, 206-word journey that seamlessly weaves together narration, fiction, meditation, devotion, and prayer. We invite you to subscribe to Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound books and his newest work, Kitchen Hymns, or listen to all our Poetry Unbound episodes.
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My name is Padre Go Toma. And years ago I had a new friend, David Clare, and we were having a cup of coffee in Dublin and we talked about poetry, as we often do, and he said to me, had I ever read Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen? And I hadn't. I was a fan of Leonard Cohen, but I hadn't read any of his poetry. And he produced a copy of it from his bag and gave it to me and. And it was one of my favourite books. And then another friend, a couple of years later, Peter Wilson, I'll call him out, borrowed the book and then kind of apologetically said to me, I'm keeping that book because I need it. I loved his audacity. And I have since purchased many copies of that book and I can't hang on to any of them. I keep on giving them away. I feel like it's a book that wants to go places. I love it. It has changed me and changed the way I think, and it has risen to the very top of everything that I love about Leonard Coh. Number eight from Leonard Cohen's Book of Mercy. In the eyes of men he falls and in his own eyes too he falls from his high place he trips on his achievement he falls to you he falls to know you it is sad, they say See his disgrace say the ones at his heel but he falls radiantly toward the light to which he falls they cannot see who lifts him as he falls or how his falling changes and he himself bewildered Till his heart cries out to bless the one who holds him in his falling and in his fall he hears his heart cry out his heart explains why he is falling why he had to fall and he gives over to the fall Blessed are you Clasp of falling he falls into the sky he falls into the light none can hurt him as he falls Blessed are you Shield of falling Wrapped in his fall Concealed within his fall he finds his place he is gathered in While his hair streams back and his clothes tear in the wind he is held up, comforted he enters into the place of his fall dwelling Blessed are you Embrace of the falling foundation of the light Master of the human accident. So Leonard Cohen was a pillar of art and deep admiration for me and for millions of others. He was a poet and a songwriter, Canadian, an artist, a real romantic visual artist as well with ink and drawings and paintings. He was a Zen Buddhist practitioner for a number of years. He was a consummate performer, a wearer of beautiful suits and a convener of the most extraordinary artists. In his public concert One of the first things I learned when I learned to play the guitar at the age of 11 was Suzanne. And I suppose I had a kind of a connection with Leonard Cohen through music right from then. And the older I get, the more I like his work and the more I appreciate how it is that he kept on changing, kept on looking at that which drew his gaze. And amongst everything that he's done, absolutely amongst everything, Book of Mercy is my favorite. He said that this book was about the heart emerging from being shattered and turning to the source of mercy. He called it a little book of prayers. And he said that writing these was like prayer. He was looking for healing. And he also said that he was not a master of a spiritual tradition when he was writing this. It does borrow enormously, this whole book from his own Jewish tradition. But he said that he wrote as a civilian that this was not a prescription. This was not a way for anybody else to have to follow. This was him seeking a way for himself. There's a rawness throughout the whole book and a deep privacy as well. The book is called Book of Mercy, not the Book of Mercy. And I like the modesty of that. Because to describe something as the Book of Mercy might be prescriptive to other people. In just calling it Book of Mercy, I feel like he's saying this is for himself. And other people can write their own Book of Mercy. And it's got 50 poems in it, styled in a certain sense, after a certain samotic form from the Psalms in the Hebrew Bible. And he released it in 1984, which was the year he himself turned 50. I don't know if there's any correlation on that, but looking back on the history of his life, I see a little bit of poetry even in the coincidence of the publication of it. Then. This is number eight in Book of Mercy. And this whole poem is short. It's just over 200 words. And all of the poems in Book of Mercy are in a kind of a block prose poem form. It looks like a paragraph. None of them are titled. They're just numbered. And the number's at the top of the page. And then there's a large empty gap before the poem appears on the page between the number and then the first word of that poem. Sometimes that means that the poem is spread over two pages, even though it doesn't need to be. If it had started a little bit further up in the page where it was numbered. I always like that element of Book of Mercy because the space in the page feels like a visual breath or feels like going deeper. It asks for a deep inhale or a deep be ready. And in this poem, there's such repetition, fall or falling or falls. That word, or derivatives of it, occur 22 times, and heart occurs 3 times, and the word he occurs 20 times. Every time Leonard Cohen spoke about this book, he spoke about it in such autobiographical terms that it does seem like he's outside himself, watching himself, narrating himself. It's like we're listening to a private prayer or a private narration or somebody who was hoping for a little bit of distance from himself in order to be able to say something about what the order in the chaos is or the outcome or the encounter. Perhaps that might be the better way of saying it, the. The encounter that might occur in the chaos. A man just writing for himself who nonetheless feels like he's at the edge of himself. Falling off the edge, perhaps, or falling from grace, falling into disrepute. The repetition of falling all these ways brings all of these kinds of phrases to mind. And there's such a recognition of shame at the beginning of the poem. He believes in a certain sense that the falling, whatever that falling is, whatever that falling apart is, is something of sh. In the eyes of men. He falls. And in his own eyes, too. He's been in a high place of achievement, perhaps, or ambition. And then there's sadness and another word, a powerful word, disgrace. To feel disgraced is an extraordinary, painful word, a disassembling word. And so many of us, at various times in our lives, for various reasons, for various lengths of time, have felt at the edge of ourselves, have felt disgraced or that we've fallen in the eyes of other people who've been looking at us. Something happens, and the sadness and the disgrace that we feared so much becomes the sadness and the disgrace that we experience. And this poem, I think, is trying to turn that experience around. But it's also a poem that recognizes and demonstrates huge empathy towards any of us who have ever felt in that position. One of the other repetitions in this particular poem from Book of Mercy is the word you. Here are all the ways in which the word you occurs. He falls to you. He falls to know you. Blessed are you. Clasp of falling. Blessed are you. Shield of falling. Blessed are you. Embrace of the falling. Foundation of the light. Master of the human accident, he had called this book. Larry Cohen had called it a Little Book of Prayer. And his art always included this really interesting mix of reverence and sensuality. A lot of references to Jewish family and identity. And his own Buddhist practice as well, and picking up on other religious traditions as well. And he mixed all of those with obscurity and strangeness and wonder and sex and poetry and sensuality. This poem is so direct by turning to something that really does sound like a new form of prayer. These addresses to the you. He's looking for a turn in his life. He was hoping for some kind of healing, and he was writing the healing, it seems to me, before he was experiencing it. He falls to you, he falls to know you. He falls radiantly toward the light to which he falls. And then he's lifted, bewildered till his heart cries, Cries out to bless the one who holds him and is falling. I feel like what he's doing is trying to not tell the future, but make the future. Looking into the experience of devastation or disgrace or the edge of himself or falling, whatever it is that's occurring or however somebody would describe that. And he is trying to write a fiction, perhaps some kind of language, some kind of music, some kind of liturgy that. That might usher in the kind of thing that he's hoping to feel. He's fallen devastatingly, but he is somehow held up. And the writing of the poem, the writing of a prayer, the naming of a desire, the naming of a shame, and in a certain sense, the self redeeming of that by giving the redemption of that to a you who catches him in his falling, all of that turns him towards some kind of aspect of devotion, some kind of wonder that helps him to recover and. And turn a story of shame, a story of falling, into a story of embrace. The repetition of blessed are you in this poem comes directly from the service in synagogue. Baruch hata Adonai, Blessed are you, Lord. And he has taken that form from the service and turned it into something for himself. He's shaped it into what he needed to hear. And by shaping it like that, perhaps there's an indication that nothing else in his life was saying that to him. That he needed it to be made anew for him in something that sounded a bit like him and that had a taste of his own religion, a taste of his own masculinity, a taste of his own sensuality, as well as a taste of his own devastation. And the desire, which is such an extraordinary, powerful thing in him, to be met in his fall by something that would gather him in and comfort him and hold him. This is not a weak idea. This is a powerful idea. And one that probably all of us will need, either in the past or in the present or in the future. Of our lives to find a way to wrap the disgrace we might feel for one thing or another into something that could gather into the Master of the Human Accident. Number eight From Leonard Cohen's Book of Mercy in the eyes of men he falls, and in his own eyes too he falls from his high place he trips on his achievement he falls to you, he falls to know you. It is sad, they say see his disgrace, say the ones at his heel, but he falls radiantly toward the light to which he falls. They cannot see who lifts him as he falls, or how his falling changes and he himself bewildered till his heart cries out to bless the one who holds him in his falling and in his fall he hears his heart cry out. His heart explains why he is falling, why he had to fall and he gives over to the fall. Blessed are you clasp of falling he falls into the sky he falls into the light. None can hurt him as he falls. Blessed are you shield of falling. Wrapped in his fall, concealed within his fall, he finds his place. He is gathered in while his hair streams back and his clothes tear in the wind. He is held up, comforted, he enters into the place of his fall. Blessed are you embrace of the falling foundation of the light, Master of the Human Accident. Book of Mercy 1, Part 8 by Leonard Cohen can be found in Book of Mercy Originally published in 1984, available in the United States throughout Villard Books and through Canongate Books in the United Kingdom. A special thanks to them for permission to use this poem. To Jamie Bing of Canongate Books and to Frederick Courtright of the Permissions Company. Poetry Unbound is Andrea Prevot, Carla Zanoni, Daryl Chen, Sparrow Murray, Chris Heagle, Bill Sigmund and me, Padre Gotuma. We Our music is composed and provided by Gautam Srikishan and Blued Out Sessions. These episodes were made in New York City on unceded Lenape land. Special thanks to Will Salwin, Nave Yan and Adam Morell at Digital Island Studios in Manhattan. Thanks as well to Frederick Courtright of the permissions company. Poetry Unbound is an independent non profit production of the On Being project founded and led by Christotip. This season of Poetry Unbound is made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. 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