Owning Everything by Leonard Cohen
To be loved is to be changed
For your sake I said I will praise the moon,
tell the colour of the river,
find new words for the agony
and ecstasy of gulls.
Because you are close,
everything that men make, observe
or plant is close, is mine:
the gulls slowly writhing, slowly singing
on the spears of wind;
the iron gate above the river;
the bridge holding between stone fingers
her cold bright necklace of pearls.
The branches of shore trees,
like trembling charts of rivers,
call the moon for an ally
to claim their sharp journeys
out of the dark sky,
but nothing in the sky responds.
The branches only give a sound
to miles of wind.
With your body and your speaking
you have spoken for everything,
robbed me of my strangerhood,
made me one
with the root and gull and stone,
and because I sleep so near to you
I cannot embrace
or have my private love with them.
You worry that I will leave you.
I will not leave you.
Only strangers travel.
Owning everything,
I have nowhere to go.
Hello and welcome to Words That Burn, the podcast taking a closer look at poetry. This week’s poem is Owning Everything by Leonard Cohen. This week's episode is a special one, because it’s dedicated to my gorgeous partner Hannah. The music and poetry of Leonard Cohen have always been something we both adored and has a very special place in our hearts.
It’s difficult to imagine Leonard Cohen as anything other than the cryptic, seemingly ethereal, pop star of the 80’s or the esoteric, gothic crooner of his later career; but in his early years Leonard Cohen was simply a poet and a rather excellent one at that.
His first 3 collections Let Us Compare Mythologies, The Spice Box Of The Earth and Flowers for Hitler came one after the other during the 50’s and b 60’s. Each collection announced a work of labyrinthine and layered poetry that brimmed with symbolism, spirituality and, most importantly at least for Cohen, love.
I recently heard a wonderful quote from Irish poet Michael Longley: "If poetry is a wheel, the hub for that wheel is love poetry," (Montague and Murray 2024). It would be fair to say that Leonard Cohen would have been a massive fan of wheels. Despite the fact that he was an incredibly prolific poet, who wrote on a multitude of themes, love was always at their core.
Within his body of work love could take any form, from lust, to pure romance, or religious transcendentalism.
His handling of these grand themes is mythic in nature. That is not an exaggeration, given the title of his debut collection, it’s clear that the supernatural and magical nature of myth was one of the driving forces behind his early work. It is perhaps one of the reasons that Cohen became one of the defining literary figures of the 60’s, whose impact and legacy within the emerging singer songwriter movement of the time, is unmistakable if difficult to quantify.(Gitlin 2002).
From those early poetic beginnings in Montreal, Cohen eventually turned to music for his poetry, frequently creating songs from his verse.(Sweeting 2016).
His influence only reached greater heights when he came to the attention of record labels who encouraged him to record his ‘’poet songs’’. Perhaps his particular brand of gloomy romance wore thin during the 1970’s, he was monikered by some as the "the poet laureate of pessimism", "the grocer of despair", "the godfather of gloom" and "the prince of bummers" (de Lisle 2004)after all.
This led to another reinvented this time as a bard of experimental dirge pop. I think music critic Simon Lewsen summed up Cohen’s capacity as a living reincarnator best when he wrote:
His life — which began in 1934 and ended on the eve of the 2016 U.S. election — was a tribute to the human capacity for self-invention. In his twenties, Cohen was a poet and experimental novelist. A decade later, he was one of the world’s most distinctive singer-songwriters, having recorded a suite of minimalist folk records with gnomic lyrics. By middle age, he had pioneered a new genre of synth-heavy spiritual pop — liturgical music for secular people who still wanted to infuse their lives with a sense of the divine.(Lewsen 2018)
Infusing the everyday with a sense of the divine is exactly what is taking place in owning everything. The divine force of this poem however is something altogether more flesh and blood; in this poem, as in many of Cohen’s, the divine is a woman.(Riches 2014)
Academic Simon Riches puts this succinctly when he writes:
[Cohen’s] relations with women—and indeed female beauty—engender a kind of religious experience, albeit of a more hedonistic kind, which is to be accorded something approaching worship.(Riches 2014)
In this poem however the religious experience has already taken place and it has been transformative. The poems opening stanza is a whirlwind of romantic mysticism as Cohen writes:
For your sake I said I will praise the moon,
tell the colour of the river,
find new words for the agony
and ecstasy of gulls.
That opening line is a prayer, or the preface to an invocation; for your sake.
More language of prayer is used as the speaker says that he praises the moon. The language from our speaker comes out almost like a spell, one used to commune with nature. The speaker turns to the river and the sound of seagulls as they swell and paints each one as almost a sentient thing. He anthropomorphises a flock of birds, and pins one colour to a river that must contain multitudes. And yet,
that first line; for your sake, undermines this act.
The speaker of the poem is not doing this for themselves, it is all in service to another. This does not devalue it though, these are beautiful acts of romance in themselves and we get that sense as an audience that our speaker might just be taking a stroll with the object of his affection. The mystery of why our speaker is performing these mini acts of worship, and indeed the transcendental nature of their relationship, is made clearer in the next stanza:
Because you are close,
everything that men make, observe
or plant is close, is mine:
the gulls slowly writhing, slowly singing
on the spears of wind;
the iron gate above the river;
the bridge holding between stone fingers
her cold bright necklace of pearls.
From the first line of this stanza, the intimacy of our speaker and his love is deepened. From there, Leonard Cohen turns the confidence we all feel in the presence of the one we love into an all encompassing, conquering emotion. The world of man and nature bends to the speaker’s will. He says that all these things are close there is almost a unifying power in the love the speaker holds for his other; whomever they may be. As academic Desmond Pacey puts it; the fulfilled lover feels himself to be a part of a universal harmony.(Pacey 1967)
The next set of images is an almost cinematic slow motion scene. The agony and ecstasy of seagulls in the first stanza is transformed through the beauty of universal harmony into a slowly moving choir of singing. In some ways this seems like a Leonard Cohen version of the They Long To Be. There are hints of why do birds suddenly appear all over this poem. Though some people might find that comparison insulting to Cohen’s body of work.
Cohen’s flair for unique imagery reasserts itself in the phrase spears of wind describing their movement and coldness all at once. Anthropomorphisation, the humanising of the inanimate, abounds in the next few lines. A bridge is two hands reaching out for connection. A river holds its natural stones and gems like pearls. The world is alive while our speaker is with their
Desire.
The bridge holding between stone fingers her cold bright necklace of pearls illustrates this intertwining of the natural and the emotional landscapes. Everything's coming together.
For me, all this living imagery only continues the strong themes of religious experience in the poem. All these objects given natural moments evoke the pagan notion of animism; the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence(Hornborg 2006).
This kind of deformalised or unstructured religion is the key to understanding Cohen’s particular form of the divine and spiritual . At times it borders on pure magic. This kind of grab bag of beliefs was a hallmark of Cohen’s and a major contributing factor to how his poetry and lyrics resonated with listeners. As academic Harry Freedman put it:
[Cohen had] an almost unique ability to draw on the best of every belief system he encountered, and as far as one can tell from his lyrics, he saw no conflict between any of them.(Anderson 2023)
Such harmonious melding is only reinforced by this poem. The speakers living, enhanced world draws further breath in the next stanza:
The branches of shore trees,
like trembling charts of rivers,
call the moon for an ally
to claim their sharp journeys
out of the dark sky,
but nothing in the sky responds.
The branches only give a sound
to miles of wind.
We move from a hint of spirituality to full blown mysticism here. The cold day and pointed imagery established by the spears of wind earlier is given an expansion in this stanza.
From a purely imagery based approach; branches reaching out to the moon, seeking an ally in the night sky, can be seen as a metaphor for the human longing for connection and understanding in the vastness of existence. The branches' journey "out of the dark sky" and their failure to elicit a response from the celestial realm may reflect the often unanswered quest for meaning in life.(Pacey 1967) Cohen's work frequently explores this theme, suggesting that while the universe may not offer clear answers, there is beauty and significance in the search itself.
The final lines, describing the branches giving sound to the wind, might symbolise the human capacity to find voice and expression even in the absence of clear communication or understanding. This idea resonates with Cohen's broader philosophy as captured in his interviews and writings, where he suggests that life, in all its complexity, is worthy of celebration and contemplation, whether it brings joy or sorrow.(Burger 2014)
In many ways, it is a perfect stand in for love. We may not always have clear communication or understanding, but when we love something or someone, we find a way to express what we need to in actions, words, deeds, or sometimes silence.
Despite this hopeful, positive interpretation the image established in this 3rd stanza is oddly desolate. It is a world that cannot contact or commune with Divinity anymore. The reason for this severed connection is revealed in the final stanza:
With your body and your speaking
you have spoken for everything,
robbed me of my strangerhood,
made me one
with the root and gull and stone,
and because I sleep so near to you
I cannot embrace
or have my private love with them.
You worry that I will leave you.
I will not leave you.
Only strangers travel.
Owning everything,
I have nowhere to go.
If you’ve been paying attention it’s no surprise that the moon has lost its divine status, because now the speaker’s lover is near and they are the only form of Divine for them; you have spoken for everything.
The speaker goes on to outline their own altered state in the presence of this new power. It is oddly violent in how it manifests: robbed me of my strangerhood. It redeems itself in the next lines:
made me one
with the root and gull and stone,
Our speaker is now part of the natural landscape, enmeshed in it.
The speaker goes on to explain the severing of his own connection with these things, and they give some explanation to what happened between the river bank and the moon earlier in the poem. Connections are so often defined by the things we overcome to make them. In Cohen’s poem there’s nothing left to overcome. The things that might necessitate coming together, an embrace as the speaker puts it, simply aren’t there thanks to their love. The notion of opposition has been obliterated by harmony. That harmony comes in the form of their love; the speaker and the desired.
For the first time our divine figure is made mortal, by being given an inner thought and concern:
You worry that I will leave you.
This wonderful trick by Cohen stops us, the reader, from becoming untethered from the poem. In stanzas filled with divine beings and metaphysical experiences it would be easy to become lost, our interest doing the same. Yet, in this one simple line, Cohen humanises the experience grounding us once more.
The poet’s devoted speaker seems to echo this grounding sentiment with a promise:
I will not leave you.
Only strangers travel.
Owning everything,
I have nowhere to go.
They cannot and will not leave, they have found everything they’ve searched for in their desired figure. In doing so they’ve become wonderfully vulnerable. Their love has removed barriers and defiance from their soul. They feel no impulse to conquer or claim, because they are in a state of owning everything as they say.
They recognise that in truly being in love they have nowhere to go.
To call Leonard Cohen a love poet, would be an understatement. To claim that he was obsessed with romantic love would be misleading. Simon Riches offers another helpful insight when he writes:
Given Cohen’s poetic and transcendental approach, it is clear that Cohen would reject any classical theory account of love. In other words, he would reject the very idea that love could have a definable essence.(Riches 2014)
The only thing that love is, in this poem, is transformative. It is a poetic account on the ways in which love can foster in us a want to grow, change, develop and ultimately accept ourselves and the world around us.
Cohen’s entire body of work is testament to the spokes of the wheel that I talked about earlier in the episode. He found a way to breathe love into everything in his life, and respect every form of love. He never turned away from the erotic or lust but also never shied from the sentimental and silly moments of true love.
His ability to ground and untether his audience to spirituality was a gift and one that left everyone who encountered his work changed.
This poem, owning everything, is a testament to change to how another can shape us and how, when we let it. Love can bring us a harmony we didn’t know we were missing.
What did you think of the poem? As always this is my interpretation and I’d love to hear yours. If you’d like to get in touch with me there are a few ways to do so.
Citations
Anderson, Matthew R. 2023. Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul. McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Burger, Jeff. 2014. Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters. Chicago Review Press.
Gitlin, Todd. 2002. “Grizzled Minstrels of Angst: Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, Forever Old.” The American Scholar 71 (2): 95–100.
Hornborg, Alf. 2006. “Animism, Fetishism, and Objectivism as Strategies for Knowing (or Not Knowing) the World.” Ethnos 71 (1): 21–32.
Lewsen, Simon. 2018. “How Do We Come to Terms with Leonard Cohen’s Legacy in the #metoo Era?” Sharp Magazine. November 6, 2018. https://sharpmagazine.com/2018/11/06/how-do-we-come-to-terms-with-leonard-cohens-legacy-in-the-metoo-era/.
Lisle, Tim de. 2004. “Who Held a Gun to Leonard Cohen’s Head?” The Guardian, September 16, 2004. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2004/sep/17/2.
Montague, Richie, and Fiona Murray. 2024. “Michael Longley: Film Delves into Work of Award-Wining Poet.” BBC, February 12, 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-68255896.
Pacey, D. 1967. “The Phenomenon of Leonard Cohen.” Canadian Literature. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/canlit/article/view/195038/190817.
Riches, Simon. 2014. “Leonard Cohen On Romantic Love.” In Leonard Cohen and Philosophy: Various Positions, edited by Jason Holt. Open Court.
Sweeting, Adam. 2016. “Leonard Cohen Obituary.” The Guardian, November 11, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/nov/11/leonard-cohen-obituary.