05 | February | 2011

Daily Archives: February 5, 2011

Leonard Cohen: Like A Bird On The Wire, Perla Batalla Singing

Posted on February 5, 2011 | 11 comments

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Like a bird on the wire
By Leonard Cohen
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.
Like a baby, stillborn,
like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song
and by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
he said to me, “You must not ask for so much.”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
she cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?”

Oh like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.

This song is about fighting to overcome obstacles, and dealing with the evils and graces that are thrust upon us in everyday life. And in dealing with the evils, asking for forgiveness from the person the wrong was done to, or from whatever religious being that person may believe in. It’s about redemption.
It is about the dual nature of the human being Free and in Bondage at the same time, in spirit: Our thoughts can set us free one moment, only to call us bach into the bounds, the next, like a captive kite, free within boundaries of the line’s lengths, and free to dive around in an erratic pattern of the wind, held up, or let down by the presence or absence of the air current: But captive, unlike the balloon set free, the white doves liberated above the human stadion, the theater, the Pantheon. The duality and imperfection of human nature, this poem is about. To Keep and hold, to free and to leg go, it is about that too. To overcome limitation and to be thoughtful and noble, to confess and to be forgiven, it is about that too. It’s about me and it is about you. It is about us, all of us, in this boat that will soon be too small, to contain us all: It is about “all of those things first”.

“I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
he said to me, “You must not ask for so much.”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?”
Human predicament: Free within physical, social, cultural limitations.