You Have Loved Enough

I said I’d be your lover.

You laughed at what I said.

I lost my job forever.

I was counted with the dead.

I swept the marble chambers,

But you sent me down below.

You kept me from believing

Until you let me know:

That I am not the one who loves –

It’s love that seizes me.

When hatred with his package comes,

You forbid delivery.

And when the hunger for your touch

Rises from the hunger,

You whisper, “You have loved enough,

Now let me be the Lover.”

I swept the marble chambers,

But you sent me down below.

You kept me from believing

Until you let me know:

That I am not the one who loves –

It’s love that chooses me.

When hatred with his package comes,

You forbid delivery.

And when the hunger for your touch

Rises from the hunger …

This song from Ten New Songs (2001), co-written by Sharon Robinson, seems a simple love song, with an elegant twist on Cohen’s sense of victimhood – “it’s love that seizes me”. But we know enough of Cohen to suspect apparent simplicity. Given that at the time of writing this song Cohen was living in Roshi’s monastery in California, and taking into account that the beloved to whom he addresses the song forbids the delivery of hatred, we can read the song as the portrayal of a spiritual journey and an expression of Cohen’s Buddhist beliefs.