Now more than thirty years after the poem above was written, Cohen, in his mid-sixties, is still dominated by desire. It’s his inspiration; and women are his Muse. A protégé in a Buddhist monastery, he tries to exorcize the ‘demon’ through asceticism. But he is not religious enough; Buddhism is a poor choice. Desire draws him downward, and Cohen drowns in lust. Here are two stanzas from a song that he recently wrote:
“The ponies run, the girls are
young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then it’s
done—
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it’s real,
A thousand kisses deep.
“I’m turning tricks, I’m getting
fixed,
I’m back on Boogie Street.
You lose your grip, and then you
slip
Into the masterpiece.
And maybe I had miles to drive,
And promises to keep:
You ditch it all to stay alive,
A thousand kisses deep”
(National Post, May 12th, 2000.)
Though usually it is shabby criticism to assume that the poet is the subject of the poem that he writes, this one is tailor-made to fit Cohen’s desire in the crisis of advancing age. In this poem, with some help from Robert Frost, is he not confessing his longing to repossess the girls that he once had? But when you get old, the ponies are faster, the girls are younger. You go back and forth from womanizing or flirting to reality: ‘your invincible defeat.’ You’ve lost your grip on ‘Boogie Street.’ But you want to ‘ditch it all’—all your obligations and ‘promises,’ like maybe your promise to defeat desire in a monastery.
One of the ‘four noble truths’ that Buddha is alleged to have apprehended is that desire must be annihilated. So Buddhism is made to order for Leonard Cohen—if the practice of Buddhism could annihilate desire, that is. Desire is tenacious. It defies age. The Buddhist monastery can’t eradicate it even in an old man. So Cohen continues to meditate on the seduction of women. He continues to write about it. Desire compels him.
When a man has not been reconciled to God, he will worship a substitute. What more natural substitute than members of the opposite sex bearing the image of God? Young women remind man of life and vigor; their skin, until marked by trouble and time, is man’s alternative altar. Maybe Cohen is craving to relive what might have been his most profound religious experience: his ‘masterpiece.’ Are not women his religion, and desire the conduit?
In a sense, women are a religious experience, and men do want that experience to last forever. To a man, the imprint of God is most noticeable on the opposite sex. When man and woman unite, this is, at its marital best, a devout experience between two creatures made in the image of the One to be worshiped. Of course, men know that the women they desire are not able to impart salvation. But many men who are distanced from God act as if that were possible. Instead of choosing one woman, which limitation would leave room for God, they spend their resources and energies on many women. These are men who live ‘under the sun,’ as Solomon puts it in Ecclesiastes—men who live for base desires. They cling to their sexual objects as if for salvation. The man who is determined to live for desires ‘under the sun’ hates the thought of mortifying his desire for women because women are the best experience ‘under the sun’ that he has ever had. The poet ‘under the sun’ does not want to give up his source of inspiration, especially when that source is Woman.
