‘Here It Is’ was first recorded on ‘Ten New Songs’ (2001), Leonard Cohen’s tenth studio albumPatrick Comerford
We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church, with just nine days to go to Christmas Day. Tomorrow is the Third Sunday of Advent or Gaudete Sunday (17 December 2023), bringing us two-thirds of the way through what is a very short Advent this year.
Throughout Advent this year, my reflections each day include a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. These Advent reflections are following this pattern:
1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;
2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
‘Here is your cross, / Your nails and your hill; / And here is your love, / That lists where it will’ (Leonard Cohen) … Marc Chagall, ‘The White Crucifixion’ (1938)The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 14, ‘Here It Is’:
‘Here It Is,’ a poem/song by Leonard Cohen, was first released 22 years ago on his tenth studio album, Ten New Songs, co-written and produced by Sharon Robinson and released in 2001.
I first used this poem in a Lenten setting when I was asked to preach at the Three Hours Devotions in Saint Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork, on Good Friday, 9 April 2004, by the then Dean Michael Burrows, now the Bishop of Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe.
This poem has the capacity to touch the reader or listener in painful places we are often too uncomfortable to search or reach.
Leonard Cohen himself once said: ‘It’s nice to write a catchy tune about death.’ But, while, some people may like poems that talk about blood, sweat and tears, I found out in Cork that Good Friday almost 20 years ago that many people are uncomfortable with some of the words in this poem.
Yet, surely, Christ must have suffered to this extreme of anxiety in Golgotha, and must have emptied himself completely of all human fluids on the cross on Calvary.
Who speaks in the poem?
Whose voice do we hear?
Who is singing?
Who narrates within the lyrics?
Is it God?
Is it just Leonard Cohen?
Is it his soul?
Does it really matter?
Some of those questions may be answered if we read this poem in the light of Advent as we prepare for Christmas or, more particularly, in Lent on the journey towards Good Friday and Easter.
Is this a legitimate way to read this poem? In his introduction to his Harvard lectures, The use of poetry and the use of criticism, TS Eliot wrote: ‘The poem’s existence is somewhere between the writer and the reader. It has a reality which is not simply the reality of what the writer is trying to ‘express’, or of his experiences of writing it, or of the experience of the reader, or of the writer as reader. Consequently the problem of what the poem ‘means’ is a good deal more difficult that it first appears … But a poem is not just either what the poet ‘planned’ or what the reader conceives, nor is its ‘use’ restricted to what the author intended or what it actually does for readers.’
Some commentators say the speaker in this poem by Leonard Cohen is God; others say the poet is speaking to himself at a point in life where death seems near, and he feels the need to collect his thoughts, recollect the past, and to face the future in truth.
And here is your love,
That lists where it will.
In this poem, God is taking an overview of a life and mixing in a bundle of opportunities in which a person has the opportunity to love. In each of these love/desire experiences, one has the opportunity to feel God’s presence.
In the first paired verses, 1 and 2, God is King of the universe and Lord of Creation, and he shows his majesty and his lordship through his love of all created things:
Here is your crown
And your seal and rings;
And here is your love
For all things.
In verse 2, the ‘cart’ is the human body in which Christ is incarnate and in which he moves around in God’s royal domain, the ‘cardboard’ the weak and flimsy body of his suffering, and the ‘piss’ the loss of all human life in his dying. In his life, suffering and death, he gives his all in love for all:
Here is your cart,
And your cardboard and piss;
And here is your love
For all of this.
In the second pair of verses, verses 3 and 4, the ‘wine’ in verse 3 may mean our thoughts and spiritual ideas. But I find resonances with the wine of the Last Supper and imagery that reminds me of Christ falling under the weight of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa, for the sake of his love for all:
Here is your wine,
And your drunken fall;
And here is your love.
Your love for it all.
The ‘sickness’ in verse 4, may be the love we have for each other, a love that may keep us away from loving God, and therefore perhaps defined as a ‘sickness’ as it detracts us from our divine purpose, to ‘love God’ first and then to love others. The bed and the pan also echo the ‘piss’ in the second verse:
Here is your sickness.
Your bed and your pan;
And here is your love
For the woman, the man.
In the four sets of two verses, the third line of each verse points to ways that we may love. But love is not mentioned in the third set of paired verses (5 and 6) – instead, we have the lines:
And here is the night,
The night has begun;
And here is your death
In the heart of your son.
And here is the dawn,
(Until death do us part);
And here is your death,
In your daughter’s heart.
Instead of love, he uses the word ‘death’ in the third lines of each of these two verses, emphasising the depth of love a parent feels for a child, and so the even deeper love God feels for us as his children in the death of Christ on the Cross.
Those verses reiterate the idea of the living and dying of every moment; the following of day with night, and night with day.
Night could represent ignorance and not knowing. But for mystics like Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila, who I have referred to in recent days, the night is also the beginning of the mystics’ journey towards communion and union with the Father, the ‘I Am Who Am.’ The Son must die in order for us to recognise his inherited unity with the Father.
Night turns to dawn with the resurrection, dawn is no longer night, the conscious is united with unconscious, night with day, and the soul with God.
In the last two paired verses, 7 and 8, he warns in verse 7 of ‘hurried’ desire and reminds us of how we hurry because we ‘long’ for something to be fulfilled, or over, or experienced. Instead, it is love on which everything is built and has its foundation:
And here you are hurried,
And here you are gone;
And here is the love,
That it’s all built upon.
In the final, closing verse (verse 8), the reference to Christ’s death, when he is nailed to the cross on the Hill of Calvary, becomes the summation of the poem:
Here is your cross,
Your nails and your hill;
And here is your love,
That lists where it will.
The word ‘lists’ in verse 8 may be a ‘list’ of objects, names or experiences. But to ‘list’ is also to listen, and also to ‘lean’ one way or the other, as when a boat leans to one side. Is he suggesting that our love may lean in different directions as time goes by, or that the love in each verse is different, listing or leaning in a different direction?
The refrain after each paired set of verses says:
May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And my love, Goodbye.
We keep living and dying each moment. May we just do this.
Leonard Cohen, Here It Is
Here is your crown
And your seal and rings;
And here is your love
For all things.
Here is your cart,
And your cardboard and piss;
And here is your love
For all of this.
May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And my love, Goodbye.
Here is your wine,
And your drunken fall;
And here is your love.
Your love for it all.
Here is your sickness.
Your bed and your pan;
And here is your love
For the woman, the man.
May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And, my love, Goodbye.
And here is the night,
The night has begun;
And here is your death
In the heart of your son.
And here is the dawn,
(Until death do us part);
And here is your death,
In your daughter’s heart.
May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And, my love, Goodbye.
And here you are hurried,
And here you are gone;
And here is the love,
That it’s all built upon.
Here is your cross,
Your nails and your hill;
And here is your love,
That lists where it will
May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And my love, Goodbye.
Matthew 17: 10-13 (NRSVA):
10 And the disciples asked him, ‘Why, then, do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ 11 He replied, ‘Elijah is indeed coming and will restore all things; 12 but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but they did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands.’ 13 Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 16 December 2023):
The theme this week in the new edition of ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘The Faith of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (16 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:
Thank you, God, that you have plans for us and they are for us to prosper and give us hope and a future. May your word to us be fulfilled.
The Collect:
O Lord, raise up, we pray, your power
and come among us,
and with great might succour us;
that whereas, through our sins and wickedness
we are grievously hindered
in running the race that is set before us,
your bountiful grace and mercy
may speedily help and deliver us;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit,
be honour and glory, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Father in heaven,
who sent your Son to redeem the world
and will send him again to be our judge:
give us grace so to imitate him
in the humility and purity of his first coming
that, when he comes again,
we may be ready to greet him
with joyful love and firm faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
purify our hearts and minds,
that when your Son Jesus Christ comes again
as judge and saviour
we may be ready to receive him,
who is our Lord and our God.
Collect on the Eve of Advent 3:
O Lord Jesus Christ,
who at your first coming sent your messenger
to prepare your way before you:
grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may likewise so prepare and make ready your way
by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at your second coming to judge the world
we may be found an acceptable people in your sight;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
‘Here It Is’ lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC.
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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