Leonard Cohen – One of Us Cannot Be Wrong Lyrics

This song was inspired by Nico. Sylvie Simmons sums up the song as follows:

“One of Us Cannot Be Wrong”, Leonard’s wryly humorous song, inspired by Nico, about a man battered but unbroken by lust (…)
In fact, there was a period when Leonard Cohen was in love with Nico:
Although he never won her, he was “madly in love with her”.
Besides “One of Us Cannot be Wrong”, she was also the source of inspiration for lots of other songs:
But in 1967, feeling he “had no skill” and that he “had forgotten how to court a lady,” Leonard went back alone to his hotel room. His thoughts full of Nico, he wrote “The Jewels in Your Shoulder” and “Take This Longing”, then titled “The Bells,” both of which he later played and taught to Nico. She was both “the tallest and blondest girl” in the song “Memories” and the muse for “Joan of Arc” (…) She also inspired “One of Us Cannot Be Wrong.”

(All quotes are taken from: Simmons, Sylvie, I’m Your Man. The Life of Leonard Cohen, Vintage, 2013).

One of Us Cannot Be Wrong Lyrics by Leonard Cohen

[Verse 1]
I lit a thin green candle
To make you jealous of me
But the room just filled up with mosquitos
They heard that my body was free
Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night
And I put it in your little shoe
And then I confess that I tortured the dress
That you wore for the world to look through

[Verse 2]
I showed my heart to the doctor
He said I just have to quit
Then he wrote himself a prescription
And your name was mentioned in it
Then he locked himself in a library shelf
With the details of our honeymoon
And I hear from the nurse that he’s gotten much worse
And his practice is all in a ruin
[Verse 3]
I heard of a saint who had loved you
So I studied all night in his school
He taught that the duty of lovers
Is to tarnish the golden rule
And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure
He drowned himself in the pool
His body is gone but back here on the lawn
His spirit continues to drool

[Verse 4]
An Eskimo showed me a movie
He’d recently taken of you
The poor man could hardly stop shivering
His lips and his fingers were blue
I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes
And I guess he just never got warm
But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice
Oh please let me come into the storm