Song ("I almost went to bed ...")

I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater


and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I'd
never been your lover

L.Cohen from "The Spice-Box of Earth"

Poem 1 ("I stopped to listen, but he did not come ...")

I stopped to listen, but he did not come. I begain again with a sense of loss. As this sense deepened I heard him again. I stopped stopping and I stopped starting, and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance. This was a strategy, and didn't work at all. Much time, years were wasted in such a minor mode. I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love. I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields. Haltingly he moves toward his throne. Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing. In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked, the court is established on beams of golden symmetry, and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs, born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.

L.Cohen from "Book of Mercy"