Suzanne Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river You can hear the boats go by You can spend the night beside her And you know that she's half crazy But that's why you want to be there And she feeds you tea and oranges That come all the way from China And just when you mean to tell her That you have no love to give her Then she gets you on her wavelength And she lets the river answer That you've always been her lover And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For you've touched her perfect body with your mind. And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said "All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them" But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone And you want to travel with him And you want to travel blind And you think maybe you'll trust him For he's touched your perfect body with his mind. Now Suzanne takes your hand And she leads you to the river She is wearing rags and feathers From Salvation Army counters And the sun pours down like honey On our lady of the harbour And she shows you where to look Among the garbage and the flowers There are heroes in the seaweed There are children in the morning They are leaning out for love And they will lean that way forever While Suzanne holds the mirror And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that you can trust her For she's touched your perfect body with her mind. -- Leonard Cohen Leonard Cohen specified, notably in a BBC interview, that the song was about encountering Suzanne Verdal, the then wife of sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, in a Montreal setting. Indeed, many lines describe different elements of the city, including its river (the Saint Lawrence) and a little chapel near the harbour, called Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours (literally Our Lady of Good Help), which sits on the side of the harbour that faces the rising sun in the morning, as it is described in the song. Suzanne Verdal was interviewed by CBC News's The National in 2006 about the song. She is now homeless in Venice Beach, California, USA, where she lives in her automobile. Verdal claims that she and Cohen never had sexual relations, contrary to what some interpretations of the song suggest. Cohen himself stated in a 1994 BBC interview that he only imagined having sex with her, as there was neither the opportunity nor inclination to actually go through with it.[2] She says she has met Cohen twice since the song's initial popularity; once after a concert Cohen performed in the 1970s and once in passing in the 1990s when she danced for him, but Cohen did not speak to her (and possibly did not recognise her). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (excerpt of Dante's Inferno: "With all six eyes he wept, and from three chins The tears and bloody foam were trickling down." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Great Uninhabitable House by Paul Eluard In the middle of an astonishing island Which her limbs traverse She lives with a dazzled world. The flesh that is displayed to the curious Awaits the waterfall on the shores Like the harvests. Awaiting further revelations Her larger eyes opened beneath the wind of her hands She imagines the horizon has unbuckled its belt for her. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Classic Poetry Series David Gascoyne - poems - Publication Date: 2004 Publisher: PoemHunter.Com - The World's Poetry Archive ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And the Seventh Dream is the Dream of Isis 1 white curtains of infinite fatigue dominating the starborn heritage of the colonies of St Francis white curtains of tortured destinies inheriting the calamities of the plagues of the desert encourage the waistlines of women to expand and the eyes of men to enlarge like pocket-cameras teach children to sin at the age of five to cut out the eyes of their sisters with nail-scissors to run into the streets and offer themselves to unfrocked priests teach insects to invade the deathbeds of rich spinsters and to engrave the foreheads of their footmen with purple signs for the year is open the year is complete the year is full of unforeseen happenings and the time of earthquakes is at hand today is the day when the streets are full of hearses and when women cover their ring fingers with pieces of silk when the doors fall off their hinges in ruined cathedrals when hosts of white birds fly across the ocean from america and make their nests in the trees of public gardens the pavements of cities are covered with needles the reservoirs are full of human hair fumes of sulphur envelop the houses of ill-fame out of which bloodred lilies appear. 2 across the square where crowds are dying in thousands a man is walking a tightrope covered with moths there is an explosion of geraniums in the ballroom of the hotel there is an extremely unpleasant odour of decaying meat arising from the depetalled flower growing out of her ear her arms are like pieces of sandpaper or wings of leprous birds in taxis and when she sings her hair stands on end and lights itself with a million little lamps like glowworms you must always write the last two letters of her christian name upside down with a blue pencil she was standing at the window clothed only in a ribbon she was burning the eyes of snails in a candle she was eating the excrement of dogs and horses she was writing a letter to the president of france 3 the edges of leaves must be examined through microscopes in order to see the stains made by dying flies at the other end of the tube is a woman bathing her husband and a box of newspapers covered with handwriting when an angel writes the word TOBACCO across the sky the sea becomes covered with patches of dandruff the trunks of trees burst open to release streams of milk little girls stick photographs of genitals to the windows of their homes prayerbooks in churches open themselves at the death service and virgins cover their parents' beds with tealeaves there is an extraordinary epidemic of tuberculosis in yorkshire where medical dictionaries are banned from the public libraries and salt turns a pale violet colour every day at seven o'clock when the hearts of troubadours unfold like soaked mattresses when the leaven of the gruesome slum-visitors and the wings of private airplanes look like shoeleather shoeleather on which pentagrams have been drawn shoeleather covered with vomitings of hedgehogs shoeleather used for decorating wedding-cakes and the gums of queens like glass marbles queens whose wrists are chained to the walls of houses and whose fingernails are covered with little drawings of flowers we rejoice to receive the blessing of criminals and we illuminate the roofs of convents when they are hung we look through a telescope on which the lord's prayer has been written and we see an old woman making a scarecrow on a mountain near a village in the middle of spain we see an elephant killing a stag-beetle by letting hot tears fall onto the small of its back we see a large cocoa-tin full of shapeless lumps of wax there is a horrible dentist walking out of a ship's funnel and leaving behind him footsteps which make noises on account of his accent he was discharged from the sanatorium and sent to examine the methods of cannibals so that wreaths of passion-flowers were floating in the darkness giving terrible illnesses to the possessors of pistols so that large quantities of rats disguised as pigeons were sold to various customers from neighbouring towns who were adepts at painting gothic letters on screens and at tying up parcels with pieces of grass we told them to cut off the buttons on their trousers but they swore in our faces and took off their shoes whereupon the whole place was stifled with vast clouds of smoke and with theatres and eggshells and droppings of eagles and the drums of the hospitals were broken like glass and glass were the faces in the last looking-glass. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Orpheus In The Underworld Curtains of rock And tears of stone, Wet leaves in a high crevice of the sky: From side to side the draperies Drawn back by rigid hands. And he came carrying the shattered lyre, And wearing the blue robes of a king, And looking through eyes like holes torn in a screen; And the distant sea was faintly heard, From time to time, in the suddenly rising wind, Like a broken song. Out of his sleep, from time to time, From between half open lips, Escaped the bewildered words which try to tell The tale of his bright night And his wing-shadowed day The soaring flights of thought beneath the sun Above the islands of the seas And all the deserts, all the pastures, all the plains Of the distracting foreign land. He sleeps with the broken lyre between his hands, And round his slumber are drawn back The rigid draperies, the tears and wet leaves, Cold curtains of rock concealing the bottomless sky. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perpetual Winter Never Known When the light falls on winter evenings And the river makes no sound in its passing Behind the house, is silent but for its cold Flowing, its reeds frozen stiffer than glass How can one anticipate the dawn, a sudden Blazing of sunlight thawing the harshest sky? How can one not remember summer evenings? Must not the tired heart sink and must not fear Bite, like an acid, wrinkles in its stone? Behind drawn curtains, gazing at the fire, Think how the earth spins dumb and bound By iron chains of frost through death-still air; And how in every street the sealed windows And orange cubes of firelight, how in houses Cuckoo-clocks imitate the spring, candles are Suns. Perpetual winter never known, Families warm their hands and wait, nor Ever doubt the season's transience. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Salvador Dali The face of the precipice is black with lovers; The sun above them is a bag of nails; the spring's First rivers hide among their hair. Goliath plunges his hand into the poisoned well And bows his head and feels my feet walk through his brain. The children chasing butterflies turn round and see him there With his hand in the well and my body growing from his head, And are afraid. They drop their nets and walk into the wall like smoke. The smooth plain with its mirrors listens to the cliff Like a basilisk eating flowers. And the children, lost in the shadows of the catacombs, Call to the mirrors for help: 'Strong-bow of salt, cutlass of memory, Write on my map the name of every river.' A flock of banners fight their way through the telescoped forest And fly away like birds towards the sound of roasting meat. Sand falls into the boiling rivers through the telescopes' mouths And forms clear drops of acid with petals of whirling flame. Heraldic animals wade through the asphyxia of planets, Butterflies burst from their skins and grow long tongues like plants, The plants play games with a suit of mail like a cloud. Mirrors write Goliath's name upon my forehead, While the children are killed in the smoke of the catacombs And lovers float down from the cliffs like rain. David Gascoyne --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Very Image - To Rene Magritte An image of my grandmother her head appearing upside-down upon a cloud the cloud transfixed on the steeple of a deserted railway-station far away An image of an aqueduct with a dead crow hanging from the first arch a modern-style chair from the second a fir-tree lodged in the third and the whole scene sprinkled with snow An image of a piano-tuner with a basket of prawns on his shoulder and a firescreen under his arm his moustache made of clay-clotted twigs and his cheeks daubed with wine An image of an aeroplane the propellor is rashers of bacon the wings are of reinforced lard the tail is made of paper-clips the pilot is a wasp An image of the painter with his left hand in a bucket and his right hand stroking a cat as he lies in bed with a stone beneath his head And all these images and many others are arranged like waxworks in model bird-cages about six inches high. David Gascoyne --------------------------------------------------------------------- Yves Tanguy The worlds are breaking in my head Blown by the brainless wind That comes from afar Swollen with dusk and dust And hysterical rain The fading cries of the light Awaken the endless desert Engrossed in its tropical slumber Enclosed by the dead grey oceans Enclasped by the arms of the night The worlds are breaking in my head Their fragments are crumbs of despair The food of the solitary damned Who await the gross tumult of turbulent Days bringing change without end. The worlds are breaking in my head The fuming future sleeps no more For their seeds are beginning to grow To creep and to cry midst the Rocks of the deserts to come Planetary seed Sown by the grotesque wind Whose head is so swollen with rumours Whose hands are so urgent with tumours Whose feet are so deep in the sand. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------END------------------------------------- Dreamland By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule- From a wild clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE- out of TIME. Bottomless vales and boundless floods, And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods, With forms that no man can discover For the tears that drip all over; Mountains toppling evermore Into seas without a shore; Seas that restlessly aspire, Surging, unto skies of fire; Lakes that endlessly outspread Their lone waters- lone and dead,- Their still waters- still and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily. By the lakes that thus outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,- Their sad waters, sad and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily,- By the mountains- near the river Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,- By the grey woods,- by the swamp Where the toad and the newt encamp- By the dismal tarns and pools Where dwell the Ghouls,- By each spot the most unholy- In each nook most melancholy- There the traveller meets aghast Sheeted Memories of the Past- Shrouded forms that start and sigh As they pass the wanderer by- White-robed forms of friends long given, In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven. For the heart whose woes are legion 'Tis a peaceful, soothing region- For the spirit that walks in shadow 'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado! But the traveller, travelling through it, May not- dare not openly view it! Never its mysteries are exposed To the weak human eye unclosed; So wills its King, who hath forbid The uplifting of the fringed lid; And thus the sad Soul that here passes Beholds it but through darkened glasses. By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have wandered home but newly From this ultimate dim Thule. Edgar Allan Poe --------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------END-------------------------------- UNDERWORLD by Ivan Goll The golden car glides like a barge on a deep nocturnal boulevard. Mountains thunder in the night, lashed by our sharp light. Into ravines we plunge with outspread angel's wings. There is the cabaret. And godlike are we clothed in a cloud. Oh already at the door stands the tailcoat with his thousand humps. From a reciter's black mouth issues the stale rot-gut reek of the outskirts. The wedding and the funeral of tear-strained seamstresses. Then cupid flings wide golden doors, and pink dancers kick out legs like seraphim. You at the bar, once a cocotte, pale in the basket of frozen anemones, Staring with huge round eyes like a night insect among the roses, You be the torch of our dance of death. Yet deeper still whirl the shadows, ever darker. A worker taps me on the shoulder: 'Ho, comrade, salut!' A mason, he had just come up out of the subway tunnel in a white, white glistening apron. Yet a black spot burns hot on it, his starved heart. Music! Music! The earth is petrified music! I shall set it free again with beautiful names of whores. Oh tailcoat, why do you smile? My life's gold melted in your hell. Oh car, impatient barge, which bears us down to the black earth again! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------END----------------------------------- Black Dada Nihilismus 1964 Amiri Baraka Against what light is false what breath sucked, for deadness. Murder, the cleansed purpose, frail, against God, if they bring him bleeding, I would not forgive, or even call him black dada nihilismus. The protestant love, wide windows, color blocked to Mondrian, and the ugly silent deaths of jews under the surgeon's knife. (To awake on 69th street with money and a hip nose. Black dada nihilismus, for the umbrella'd jesus. Trillby intrigue movie house presidents sticky on the floor. B.D.N., for the secret men, Hermes, the blacker art. Thievery (ahh, they return those secret gold killers. Inquisitors of the cocktail hour. Trismegistus, have them, in their transmutation, from stone to bleeding pearl, from lead to burning looting, dead Moctezuma, find the West a grey hideous space. 2 From Sartre, a white man, it gave the last breath. And we beg him die, before he is killed. Plastique, we do not have, only thin heroic blades. The razor. Our flail against them, why you carry knives? Or brutaled lumps of heart? Why you stay, where they can reach? Why you sit, or stand, or walk in this place, a window on a dark warehouse. Where the minds packed in straw. New homes, these towers, for those lacking money or art. A cult of death need of the simple striking arm under the streetlamp. The cutters, from under their rented earth. Come up, black dada nihilismus. Rape the white girls. Rape their fathers. Cut the mothers’ throats. Black dada nihilismus, choke my friends in their bedrooms with their drinks spilling and restless for tilting hips or dark liver lips sucking splinters from the master’s thigh. Black scream and chant, scream, and dull, un earthly hollering. Dada, bilious what ugliness, learned in the dome, colored holy shit (i call them sinned or lost burned masters of the lost nihil German killers all our learned art, 'member what you said money, God, power, a moral code, so cruel it destroyed Byzantium, Tenochtitlan, Commanch (got it, Baby! For tambo, willie best, dubois, patrice, mantan, the bronze buckaroos. For Jack Johnson, asbestos, tonto, buckwheat, billie holiday. For tom russ, l'overture, vesey, beau jack, (may a lost god damballah, rest or save us against the murders we intend against his lost white children black dada nihilismus ----------------------------------------------------------------------