I just bought his brand new album "dear heather" and i really love it. Thankfully, except for the first song, the production is a lot better than "10 new songs". And there are some live intruments again. Listen to "the faith", he recorded this song with the same band he recorded his album 'recent songs" with. There is no doubt that it is one of his most beautiful songs ever.

This album is more poetry than most of hsi albums of late. Are these poems or songs? That's one of the great things cohen has acheived in his career, being able to bring poetry to the masses, making it seem less formal.

Because Of

Because of a few songs
Wherein I spoke of their mystery,
Women have been
Exceptionally kind
to my old age.
They make a secret place
In their busy lives
And they take me there.
They become naked
In their different ways
and they say,
"Look at me, Leonard
Look at me one last time."
Then they bend over the bed
And cover me up
Like a baby that is shivering.


Undertow

I set out one night
When the tide was low
There were signs in the sky
But I did not know
I'd be caught in the grip
Of the undertow
Ditched on a beach
Where the sea hates to go
With a child in my arms
And a chill in my soul
And my heart the shape
Of a begging bowl


Dear Heather

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white
From the winter



To A Teacher
Hurt once and for all into silence.
A long pain ending without a song to prove it.
Who could stand beside you so close to Eden,
When you glinted in every eye the held-high
razor, shivering every ram and son?
And now the silent loony bin, where
The shadows live in the rafters like
Day-weary bats,
Until the turning mind, a radar signal,
lures them to exaggerate
Mountain-size on the white stone wall
Your tiny limp.
How can I leave you in such a house?
Are there no more saints and wizards
to praise their ways with pupils,
No more evil to stun with the slap
of a wet red tongue?
Did you confuse the Messiah in a mirror
and rest because he had finally come?
Let me cry Help beside you, Teacher.
I have entered under this dark roof
As fearlessly as an honoured son
Enters his father's house.


these are poems set to music for sure. The last one is actually a poem from his 1961 book of poetry called 'the spice-box of earth"