Leonard Cohen – The Priest Says Goodbye Lyrics

The Priest Says Goodbye Lyrics by Leonard Cohen

My love, the song is less than sung
when with your lips you take it from my tongue —
nor can you seize this firm erotic grace
and halt it tumbling into commonplace.

No one I know can set the hook
to fix lust in a longing look
where we can read from time to time
the absolute ballet our bodies mime.

Harry can’t, his face in Sally’s crotch,
nor Tom, who only loves when neighbours watch —
one mistakes the ballet for the chart,
one hopes that gossip will perform like art.
And what of art? When passion dies
friendship hovers round our flesh like flies,
and we name beautiful the smells
that corpses give and immortelles.

I have studied rivers: the waters rush
like eternal fire in Moses’ bush.
Some things live with honour. I will see
lust burn like fire in a holy tree.

Do not come with me. When I stand alone
my voice sings out as though I did not own
my throat. Abelard proved how bright could be
the bed between the hermitage and nunnery.

You are beautiful. I will sing beside
rivers where longing Hebrews cried.
As separate exiles we can learn
how desert trees ignite and branches burn.

At certain crossroads we will win
the harvest of our discipline.
Swollen flesh, minds fed on wilderness —
O what a blaze of love our bodies press!