A Sunday “Anthem”
August 28, 2011
We asked for signs the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood of every government –
signs for all to see.
I can’t run no more with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.
You can add up the parts but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march, there is no drum
Every heart, every heart to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen. Full lyrics here.
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7 Comments
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Interesting. Leonard Cohen is my internist. I hope he is a better physician than a lyricist.
You’re a really funny guy, Virgil. I get it: Cohen … Jewish … doctor …. That’s a good one. Good ear for lyrical brilliance, too.
Putz.
Nice, Mark.
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Good to remember.
Dear Mr Gordon,
On a Catholic site such as this, I would think that a charitable, intelligent reply expressing difference of opinion is far better than a sarcastic statement ending in “street-diss” lite.
Pax tecum,
Virgil
Mr. Evans,
Please be assured that charitable, intelligent comments will always be answered in kind, as will their opposite.
Et cum spiritu tuo,
Mark
Mr Gordon,
May I make a suggestion? Sidestep whatever passes for wit from anyone who writes and seize the opportunity for educating the respondent. In my case, you might have had a ready reader had you said something along the lines of, “Virgil – what do you really know of Mr. Cohen’s work? Do you know anything of its richness, for example (listing samples of his best comes to mind)? I still may not have found Mr Cohen to my “thing”, but I would have at least been invited to take a step in the direction of a greater appreciation of his work. And, finally, in matters of taste, let us not argue.
It’s not so much the little whiff of anti-Semitism that appalls, but the inability to recognize the high quality lyrics of a man who is arguably the greatest songwriter to come along since the 1960s.