Leonard Cohen: "Slowly I Married Her"

This poem has all the signature elements of a good Leonard Cohen poem: The repeated refrain that is clear yet somehow just out of reach; variations that comment on the refrain, conjuring different insinuations; the melding of the sensual and the philosophical; signature imagery ("I came to her fragrance / with nostrils wide"); koan-like paradox ("in boredom and joy"; "wounded so deep and so well / that no one can hurt us"); and finally, those liturgical cadences. Am I going to tell you what it means? No, I wouldn't insult the late master like that.

Slowly I Married Her

Slowly I married her
Slowly and bitterly married her love
Married her body
….in boredom and joy
Slowly I came to her
Slow and restfully came to her bed
Came to her table
in hunger and habit
….came to be fed
Slowly I married her
sanctioned by none
with nobody’s name
….amid general warnings
….amid general scorn
Came to her fragrance
….my nostrils wide
Came to her greed
….with seed for a child
Years in the coming
and years in retreat
….Slowly I married her
Slowly I kneeled
And now we are wounded
….so deep and so well
that no one can hurt us
except Death itself
….And all through Death’s dream
I move with her lips
The dream is a night
….but eternal the kiss
And slowly I come to her
…slowly we shed
the clothes of our doubting
….and slowly we wed

From Death of a Ladies Man, 1978