– Look at him!
– What’s happening?
Between the De Luxe Polar Hunt and the plate-glass windows of the Main Shooting and Game Alley the gasps were beginning that would spread over the heads of the astounded crowd like a leak in the atmosphere. The old man had commenced his remarkable performance (which I do not intend to describe). Suffice it to say that he disintegrated slowly; just as a crater extends its circumference with endless tiny landslides along the rim, he dissolved from the inside out. His presence had not completely disappeared when he began to reassemble himself. “Had not completely disappeared” is actually the wrong way of looking at it. His presence was like the shape of an hourglass, strongest where it was smallest. And that point where he was most absent, that’s when the gasps started, because the future streams through that point, going both ways. That is the beautiful waist of the hourglass! That is the point of Clear Light! Let it change forever what we do not know! For a lovely briefness all the sand is compressed in the stem between the two flasks! Ah, this is not a second chance. For all the time it takes to launch a sigh he allowed the spectators a vision of All Chances At Once! For some purists (who merely destroy shared information by mentioning it) this point of most absence was the feature of the evening. Quickly now, as if even he participated in the excitement over the unknown, he greedily reassembled himself into – into a movie of Ray Charles. Then he enlarged the screen, degree by degree, like a documentary on the Industry. The moon occupied one lens of his sunglasses, and he laid out his piano keys across a shelf of the sky, and he leaned over him as though they were truly the row of giant fishes to feed a hungry multitude. A fleet of jet planes dragged his voice over us who were holding hands.
– Just sit back and enjoy it, I guess.
– Thank God it’s only a movie.
– Hey! cried a New Jew, laboring on the lever of the broken Strength Test. Hey. Somebody’s making it!
The end of this book has been rented to the Jesuits. The Jesuits demand the official beatification of Catherine Tekakwitha!
“Pour le succes de l’enterprise, for the success of this enterprise, il est essential que les miracles éclatent de nouveau, it is essential that the miracles sparkle again, et donc que le culte de la sainte grandisse, and thus extend the cult of the saint, qu’on l’invoque partout avec confiance, that one may invoke her with confidence everywhere, qu’elle redevienne par son invocation, that she becomes again by her mere invocation, par les reliques, by her relics, par la poudre de son tombeau, by the dust of her grave, la semeuse de miracles qu’elle fut au temps jadis, the sower of miracles that she was in former times.” We petition the country for miracle evidence, and we submit this document, whatever its intentions, as the first item in a revived testimonial to the Indian girl. “Le Canada et les États-Unis puiseront de nouvelles forces au contact de ce lis très pur des bords de la Mohawk et des rives du Saint-Laurent. Canada and the United States will achieve a new strength from contact with this purest lily from the shores of the Mohawk and the banks of the St. Lawrence River.”
Poor men, poor men, such as we, they’ve gone and fled. I will plead from electrical tower. I will plead from turret of plane. He will uncover His face. He will not leave me alone. I will spread His name in Parliament. I will welcome His silence in pain. I have come through the fire of family and love. I smoke with my darling, I sleep with my friend. We talk of the poor men, broken and fled. Alone with my radio I lift up my hands. Welcome to you who read me today. Welcome to you who put my heart down. Welcome to you, darling and friend, who miss me forever in your trip to the end.
CREDITS
The epigraph poem and others quoted in The Favourite Game are from The Spice Box of Earth by Leonard Cohen, and are reprinted by kind permission of the publishers, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
The lyrics on page 37 are from “The Girl That I Marry” by Irving Berlin. Copyright © 1946 (Renewed) by Irving Berlin. All rights for the world, excluding the U.S., China, Japan, Okinawa controlled by Warner Chappell Music Ltd. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL. 33014.
The lyrics on page 44 are from “Near You” by Kermit Goell and Francis Craig. Copyright © 1947 (Renewed) by Supreme Music Corporation. All rights administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL. 33014.
The lyrics on pages 102-103 are from “I Almost Lost My Mind” by Ivory Joe Hunter © 1956 (Renewed) by Unichappell Music, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL. 33014.
The lyrics quoted on pages 326–330 are from “It Hurt Me Too” by M. Gaye and W Stevenson. Copyright © 1962 by Jobete Music Co., Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2009 by Leonard Cohen
This omnibus edition published in 2009 by McClelland & Stewart
The Favourite Game: Copyright © 1963 by Leonard Cohen
First published in England by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd., 1963
Beautiful Losers: Copyright © 1966 by Leonard Cohen
First published by McClelland & Stewart in 1966
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency - is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Cohen, Leonard, 1934–
The favourite game & Beautiful losers / Leonard Cohen.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-309-6
I. Cohen, Leonard, 1934–. Beautiful losers. II. Title.
PS8505.022F3 2009 C813′.54 C2009-901782-2
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
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Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
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Leonard Cohen, The Favourite Game & Beautiful Losers
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