Leonard Cohen - The song of the hellenist

The song of the hellenist

 (for R.K.)

Those unshadowed figures, rounded lines of men

who kneel by curling waves, amuse by ornate birds –

If that had been the ruling way,

I would have grown long hairs for the corners of my mouth...

O cities of the Decapolis across the Jordan

you are too great; our young men love you,

and men in high places have caused gymnasiums

to be built in Jerusalem.

            I tell you my people the statues are too tall.

            Beside them we are small and ugly,

            Blemishes on the pedestal.

Portrait from a room - 1969
Leonard Cohen à Hydra par Marcelle Maltais

My name is Theodotus, do not call me Jonathan.

My name is Dositheus, do not call me Nathaniel.

            Call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor…

“Have you seen my landsmen in the museums,

the brilliant scholars with the dirty fingernails,

standing before the marble gods,

            underneath the lot?”

Among straight noses, natural and carved,

I have said my clever things thought out before;

jested on the Protocols, the cause of war,

            quoted “Bleistein with a Cigar.”

And in the salon that holds the city in its great window,

in the salon among the Herrenmenschen,

among the close-haired youth, I made them laugh

when the child came in:

            “Come, I need you for a Passover Cake.”

And I have touched their tall clean women,

thinking somehow theyr are unclean,

            a scaleless fish.

They have smiled quietly at me,

and with their friends–

            I wonder what they see.

O cities of the Decapolis,

call us Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor…

            Dark women, soon I will not love you.

My children will boast of their ancestors at Marathon

And under the wall of Troy,

            And Athens, my chiefest joy–

O call me Alexander, Demetrius, Nicanor…

Let us compare mythologies - 1956