Flowers for Hitler • A NOTE ON THE TITLE A while ago this book would have been called SUNSHINE FOR NAPOLEON, and earlier still it would have been called WALLS FOR GENGHIS KHAN © COPYRIGHT Leonard Cohen, 1964 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. eISBN: 978-1-55199-499-4 The Canadian Publishers McClelland and Stewart Limited 25 Hollinger Road, Toronto 16 DESIGN: F. NEWFELD v3.1 CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph What I’m Doing Here The Hearth Portrait of the City Hall Congratulations The Drawer’s Condition on November 28, 1961 The Suit Business as Usual Indictment of the Blue Hole Nothing I Can Lose Police Gazette No Partners On the Death of an Uncharted Planet I Wanted to Be a Doctor On Hearing a Name Long Unspoken Finally I Called Style Goebbels Abandons His Novel and Joins the Party Why Commands Are Obeyed It Uses Us! The First Murder My Teacher is Dying Montreal 1964 Why Experience Is No Teacher For My Old Layton The Only Tourist in Havana Turns His Thoughts Homeward The Invisible Trouble Sick Alone Millennium Hitler the Brain-Mole Death of a Leader Alexander Trocchi, Public Junkie, Priez Pour Nous Three Good Nights To a Man Who Thinks He Is Making an Angel On the Sickness of My Love Cruel Baby For Marianne The Failure of a Secular Life My Mentors Hydra 1960 Leviathan Heirloom Promise Sky Waiting for Marianne Why I Happen to Be Free The True Desire The Way Back The Project Hydra 1963 All There Is to Know about Adolph Eichmann The New Leader How It Happened in the Middle of the Day For E.J.P. The Glass Dog A Migrating Dialogue The Bus Laundry The Rest Is Dross How the Winter Gets In Propaganda Opium and Hitler For Anyone Dressed in Marble Wheels, Fireclouds Folk I Had It for a Moment Island Bulletin Independence The House Order Destiny Queen Victoria and Me The Pure List and the Commentary The New Step (A Ballet-Drama in One Act) The Paper Nursery Rhyme Old Dialogue Winter Bulletin Why Did You Give My Name to the Police? Governments Make Me Lonely The Lists To the Indian Pilgrims The Music Crept By Us The Telephone Disguises Lot One of the Nights I Didn’t Kill Myself The Big World Narcissus Cherry Orchards Streetcars Bullets Hitler Front Lawn Kerensky Another Night with Telescope FOR MARIANNE If from the inside of the Lager, a message could have seeped out to free men, it would have been this: Take care not to suffer in your own homes what is inflicted on us here. PRIMO LEVI WHAT I’M DOING HERE I do not know if the world has lied I have lied I do not know if the world has conspired against love I have conspired against love The atmosphere of torture is no comfort I have tortured Even without the mushroom cloud still I would have hated Listen I would have done the same things even if there were no death I will not be held like a drunkard under the cold tap of facts I refuse the universal alibi Like an empty telephone booth passed at night and remembered like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted only on the way out like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand into strange brotherhood I wait for each one of you to confess THE HEARTH The day wasn’t exactly my own since I checked and found it on a public calendar. Tripping over many pairs of legs as I walked down the park I also learned my lust was not so rare a masterpiece. Buildings actually built wars planned with blood and fought men who rose to generals deserved an honest thought as I walked down the park. I came back quietly to your house which has a place on a street. Not a single other house disappeared when I came back. You said some suffering had taught me that. I’m slow to learn I began to speak of stars and hurricanes. Come here little Galileo – you undressed my vision – it’s happier and easier by far or cities wouldn’t be so big. Later you worked over lace and I numbered many things your fingers and all fingers did. As if to pay me a sweet for my ardour on the rug you wondered in the middle of a stitch: Now what about those stars and hurricanes? PORTRAIT OF THE CITY HALL The diamonds of guilt The scrolls of guilt The pillars of guilt The colours of guilt The flags of guilt The gargoyles of guilt The spines of guilt Listen, says the mayor, listen to the woodland birds. They are singing like men in chains. CONGRATULATIONS Here we are eating the sacred mushrooms out of the Japanese heaven eating the flower in the sands of Nevada Hey Marco Polo and you Arthur Rimbaud friends of the sailing craft examine our time’s adventure the jewelled house of Dachau Belsen’s drunk fraternity Don’t your boats seem like floating violins playing Jack Benny tunes? THE DRAWER’S CONDITION ON NOVEMBER 28, 1961 Is there anything emptier than the drawer where you used to store your opium? How like a blackeyed susan blinded into ordinary daisy is my pretty kitchen drawer! How like a nose sans nostrils is my bare wooden drawer! How like an eggless basket! How like a pool sans tortoise! My hand has explored my drawer like a rat in an experiment of mazes. Reader, I may safely say there’s not an emptier drawer in all of Christendom! THE SUIT I am locked in a very expensive suit old elegant and enduring Only my hair has been able to get free but someone has been leaving their dandruff in it Now I will tell you all there is to know about optimism Each day in hub cap mirror in soup reflection in other people’s spectacles I check my hair for an army of alpinists for Indian rope trick masters for tangled aviators for dove and albatross for insect suicides for abominable snowmen I check my hair for aerialists of every kind Dedicated as an automatic elevator I comb my hair for possibilities I stick my neck out I lean illegally from locomotive windows and only for the barber do I wear a hat BUSINESS AS USUAL The gold roof of Parliament covered with fingerprints and scratches. And here are the elected, hunchbacked from climbing on each other’s heads. The most precious secret has been leaked: There is no Opposition! Over-zealous hacks hoist the P.M. through the ceiling. He fools an entire sled-load of Miss Canada losers by acting like a gargoyle. Some fool (how did he get in) who wants jobs for everyone and says so in French is quickly interred under a choice piece of the cornice and likes it. (STAG PARTY LAUGHTER) When are they going to show the dirty movie? Don’t cry, Miss Canada, it’s not as though the country’s in their hands. And next year we’re piping in Congressional proceedings direct from Washington – all they’ll have to do is make divorces. INDICTMENT OF THE BLUE HOLE January 28 1962 You must have heard me tonight I
