Flowers for Hitler

by Leonard Cohen

  A MIGRATING DIALOGUE

  He was wearing a black moustache and leather hair.

  We talked about the gypsies.

  Don’t bite your nails, I told him.

  Don’t eat carpets.

  Be careful of the rabbits.

  Be cute.

  Don’t stay up all night watching

  parades on the Very Very Very Late Show.

  Don’t ka-ka in your uniform.

  And what about all the good generals,

  the fine old aristocratic fighting men,

  the brave Junkers, the brave Rommels,

  the brave von Silverhaired Ambassadors

  who resigned in 41?

  Wipe that smirk off your face.

  Captain Marvel signed the whip contract.

  Joe Palooka manufactured whips.

  Li’l Abner packed the whips in cases.

  The Katzenjammer Kids thought up experiments.

  Mere cogs,

  Peekaboo Miss Human Soap.

  It never happened.

  O castles on the Rhine.

  O blond SS.

  Don’t believe everything you see in museums.

  I said WIPE THAT SMIRK including

  the mouth-foam of superior disgust.

  I don’t like the way you go to work every morning.

  How come the buses still run?

  How come they’re still making movies?

  I believe with a perfect faith in the Second World War.

  I am convinced that it happened.

  I am not so sure about the First World War.

  The Spanish Civil War – maybe.

  I believe in gold teeth.

  I believe in Churchill.

  Don’t tell me we dropped fire into cribs.

  I think you are exaggerating.

  The Treaty of Westphalia has faded like a lipstick

  smudge on the Blarney Stone.

  Napoleon was a sexy brute.

  Hiroshima was Made in Japan out of paper.

  I think we should let sleeping ashes lie.

  I believe with a perfect faith in all the history

  I remember, but it’s getting harder and harder

  to remember much history.

  There is sad confetti sprinkling

  from the windows of departing trains.

  I let them go. I cannot remember them.

  They hoot mournfully out of my daily life.

  I forget the big numbers,

  I forget what they mean.

  I apologize to the special photogravure section

  of a 1945 newspaper which began my education.

  I apologize left and right.

  I apologize in advance to all the folks

  in this fine wide audience for my tasteless closing remarks.

  Braun, Raubal and him

  (I have some experience in these matters),

  these three humans,

  I can’t get their nude and loving bodies out of my mind.

  THE BUS

  I was the last passenger of the day,

  I was alone on the bus,

  I was glad they were spending all that money

  just getting me up Eighth Avenue.

  Driver! I shouted, it’s you and me tonight,

  let’s run away from this big city

  to a smaller city more suitable to the heart,

  let’s drive past the swimming pools of Miami Beach,

  you in the driver’s seat, me several seats back,

  but in the racial cities we’ll change places

  so as to show how well you’ve done up North,

  and let us find ourselves some tiny American fishing village

  in unknown Florida

  and park right at the edge of the sand,

  a huge bus pointing out,

  metallic, painted, solitary,

  with New York plates.

  LAUNDRY

  I took a backward look

  As I walked down the street

  My wife was hanging laundry

  Sheet after sheet after sheet

  She ran them down the clothesline

  Like flags above a ship

  Her mouth was full of clothespins

  They twisted up her lip

  At last I saw her ugly

  Now I could not stay

  I made an X across her face

  But a sheet got in the way

  Then the wind bent back

  This flag of armistice

  I made the X again

  As a child repeats a wish

  The second X I drew

  Set me up in trade

  I will never find the faces

  For all goodbyes I’ve made

  THE REST IS DROSS

  We meet at a hotel

  with many quarters for the radio

  surprised that we’ve survived as lovers

  not each other’s

  but lovers still

  with outrageous hope and habits in the craft

  which embarrass us slightly

  as we let them be known

  the special caress the perfect inflammatory word

  the starvation we do not tell about

  We do what only lovers can

  make a gift out of necessity

  Looking at our clothes

  folded over the chair

  I see we no longer follow fashion

  and we own our own skins

  God I’m happy we’ve forgotten nothing

  and can love each other

  for years in the world

  HOW THE WINTER GETS IN

  I ask you where you want to go

  you say nowhere

  but your eyes make a wish

  An absent chiropractor

  you stroke my wrist

  I’m almost fooled into

  greasy circular snores

  when I notice your eyes

  sounding the wall for

  dynamite points

  like a doctor at work on a TB chest

  Nowhere you say again in a kiss

  go to sleep

  First tell me your wish

  Your lashes startle on my skin

  like a seismograph

  An airliner’s perishing drone

  pulls the wall off our room

  like an old band-aid

  The winter comes in

  and the eyes I don’t keep

  tie themselves to a journey

  like wedding tin cans

  Ways Mills

  November 1963

  PROPAGANDA

  The coherent statement was made

  by father, the gent with spats to

  keep his shoes secret. It had to

  do with the nature of religion and

  the progress of lust in the twentieth

  century. I myself have several

  statements of a competitive

  coherence which I intend to spread

  around at no little expense. I

  love the eternal moment, for

  instance. My father used to remark,

  doffing his miniature medals, that

  there is a time that is ripe for

  everything. A little extravagant,

  Dad, I guess, judging by values.

  Oh well, he’d say, and the whole

  world might have been the address.

  OPIUM AND HITLER

  Several faiths

  bid him leap –

  opium and Hitler

  let him sleep.

  A Negress with

  an appetite

  helped him think

  he wasn’t white.

  Opium and Hitler

  made him sure

  the world was glass.

  There was no cure

  for matter

  disarmed as this:

  the state rose on

  a festered kiss.

  Once a dream

  nailed on the sky

  a summer sun

  while it was h
igh.

  He wanted a

  blindfold of skin,

  he wanted the

  afternoon to begin.

  One law broken –

  nothing held.

  The world was wax,

  his to mould.

  No! He fumbled

  for his history dose.

  The sun came loose,

  his woman close.

  Lost in a darkness

  their bodies would reach,

  the Leader started

  a racial speech.

  FOR ANYONE DRESSED IN MARBLE

  The miracle we all are waiting for

  is waiting till the Parthenon falls down

  and House of Birthdays is a house no more

  and fathers are unpoisoned by renown.

  The medals and the records of abuse

  can’t help us on our pilgrimage to lust,

  but like whips certain perverts never use,

  compel our flesh in paralysing trust.

  I see an orphan, lawless and serene,

  standing in a corner of the sky,

  body something like bodies that have been,

  but not the scar of naming in his eye.

  Bred close to the ovens, he’s burnt inside.

  Light, wind, cold, dark – they use him like a bride.

  WHEELS, FIRECLOUDS

  I shot my eyes through the drawers of your empty coffins,

  I was loyal,

  I was one who lifted up his face.

  FOLK

  flowers for hitler the summer yawned

  flowers all over my new grass

  and here is a little village

  they are painting it for a holiday

  here is a little church

  here is a school

  here are some doggies making love

  the flags are bright as laundry

  flowers for hitler the summer yawned

  I HAD IT FOR A MOMENT

  I had it for a moment

  I knew why I must thank you

  I saw powerful governing men in black suits

  I saw them undressed

  in the arms of young mistresses

  the men more naked than the naked women

  the men crying quietly

  No that is not it

  I’m losing why I must thank you

  which means I’m left with pure longing

  How old are you

  Do you like your thighs

  I had it for a moment

  I had a reason for letting the picture

  of your mouth destroy my conversation

  Something on the radio

  the end of a Mexican song

  I saw the musicians getting paid

  they are not even surprised

  they knew it was only a job

  Now I’ve lost it completely

  A lot of people think you are beautiful

  How do I feel about that

  I have no feeling about that

  I had a wonderful reason for not merely

  courting you

  It was tied up with the newspapers

  I saw secret arrangements in high offices

  I saw men who loved their worldliness

  even though they had looked through

  big electric telescopes

  they still thought their worldliness was serious

  not just a hobby a taste a harmless affectation

  they thought the cosmos listened

  I was suddenly fearful

  one of their obscure regulations

  could separate us

  I was ready to beg for mercy

  Now I’m getting into humiliation

  I’ve lost why I began this

  I wanted to talk about your eyes

  I know nothing about your eyes

  and you’ve noticed how little I know

  I want you somewhere safe

  far from high offices

  I’ll study you later

  So many people want to cry quietly beside you

  July 4, 1963

  ISLAND BULLETIN

  Oh can my fresh white trousers

  and the gardenia forest

  and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

  and my heroic tan

  and my remarkable quaint house

  and my Italian sun-glasses

  can they do for me

  what our first meeting did?

  I am so good with fire yet I hesitate

  to begin again

  believing perhaps in some ordeal by property

  I am standing by the Sunset Wall

  proud

  thin despite my luxury

  In my journey I know I am

  somewhere beyond the travelling pack of poets

  I am a man of tradition

  I will remain here until

  I am sure what I am leaving

  July 4, 1963

  INDEPENDENCE

  Tonight I will live with my new white skin

  which I found under a millennium of pith clothing

  None of the walls jump when I call them

  Trees smirked you’re one of us now

  when I strode through the wheat in my polished boots

  Out of control awake and newly naked

  I lie back in the luxury of my colour

  Somebody is marching for me at me to me

  Somebody has a flag I did not invent

  I think the Aztecs have not been sleeping

  Magic moves from hand to hand like money

  I thought we were the bank the end of the line

  New York City was just a counter

  the crumpled bill passed across

  I thought that heroes meant us

  I have been reading too much history

  and writing too many history books

  Magic moves from hand to hand and I’m broke

  Someone stops the sleepwalker in the middle of the opera

  and pries open his fist finger by finger

  and kisses him goodbye

  I think the Aztecs have not been sleeping

  no matter what I taught the children

  I think no one has ever slept but he

  who gathers the past into stories

  Magic moves from hand to hand

  Somebody is smiling in one of our costumes

  Somebody is stepping out of a costume

  I think that is what invisible means

  July 4, 1963

  THE HOUSE

  Two hours off the branch and burnt

  the petals of the gardenia curl and deepen

  in the yellow-brown of waste

  Your body wandered close

  I didn’t raise my hand to reach

  the distance was so familiar

  Our house is happy with its old furniture

  the black Venetian bed stands on gold claws

  guarding the window

  Don’t take the window away

  and leave a hole in the stark mountains

  The clothesline and the grey clothespins

  would make you think we’re going to be together always

  Last night I dreamed

  you were Buddha’s wife

  and I was a historian watching you sleep

  What vanity

  A girl told me something beautiful

  Very early in the morning

  she saw an orange-painted wooden boat

  come into port over the smooth sea

  The cargo was hay

  The boat rode low under the weight

  She couldn’t see the sailors

  but on top of all the hay sat a monk

  Because of the sun behind he seemed

  to be sitting in a fire

  like that famous photograph

  I forgot to tell you the story

  She surprised me by telling it

  and I wanted her for ten minutes

  I really enjoyed the gardenia from Sophia’s courtyard

  You put it
on my table two hours ago

  and I can smell it everywhere in the house

  Darling I attach nothing to it

  July 4, 1963

  ORDER

  In many movies I came upon an idol

  I would not touch, whose forehead jewel

  was safe, or if stolen – mourned.

  Truly, I wanted the lost forbidden city

  to be the labyrinth for wise technicolor

  birds, and every human riddle

  the love-fed champion pursued

  I knew was bad disguise for greed.

  I was with the snake who made his nest

  in the voluptuous treasure, I dropped

  with the spider to threaten the trail-bruised

  white skin of the girl who was searching

  for her brother, I balanced on the limb

  with the leopard who had to be content

  with Negroes and double-crossers

  and never tasted but a slash of hero flesh.

  Even after double-pay I deserted

  with the bearers, believing every rumour

  the wind brought from the mountain pass.

  The old sorceress, the spilled wine,

  the black cards convinced me:

  the timeless laws must not be broken.

  When the lovers got away with the loot

  of new-valued life or love, or bought

  themselves a share in time by letting

  the avalanche seal away for ever

  the gold goblets and platters, I knew

  a million ways the jungle might have been

  meaner and smarter. As the red sun

  came down on their embrace I shouted

  from my velvet seat, Get them, get them,

  to all the animals drugged with anarchy and happiness.

  August 6, 1963

  DESTINY

  I want your warm body to disappear

  politely and leave me alone in the bath

  because I want to consider my destiny.

  Destiny! why do you find me in this bathtub,

  idle, alone, unwashed, without even

  the intention of washing except at the last moment?

  Why don’t you find me at the top of a telephone pole,