September 22, 2011

*That lonely wooden harbor


After my last post about the song "Suzanne", when I quoted the words "Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water, and he spent a long time looking for that lonely wooden harbor,"  it struck me that the lyrics made no sense, and perhaps I'd jumbled them up somewhere along the line of years between 1967, when I first heard the song by, I think,David McCallum. I could be wronh. It could be another pale, slight British man.

I listened to Leonard Cohen again and discovered that the actual lyrics are "and he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower."

Oh, I don't know.  "Lonely wooden harbor" makes as much sense as "lonely wooden tower," what with there having been no tower and all in the Jesus story.  Leonard can sing it his way, and I'll try to do the same, but if I faiil, love is still the tune and the conclusion.

No comments: