Listen to the stories

men tell of last year

that sound of other places

though they happened here
Listen to a name

so private it can burn

hear it said aloud

and learn and learn
History is a needle

for putting men asleep

anointed with the poison

of all they want to keep
Now a name that saved you

has a foreign taste

claims a foreign body

froze in last year’s waste
And what is living lingers

while monuments are built

then yields its final whisper

to letters raised in gilt
But cries of stifled ripeness

whip me to my knees

I am with the falling snow

falling in the seas
I am with the hunters

hungry and shrewd

and I am with the hunted

quick and soft and ****
I am with the houses

that wash away in rain

and leave no teeth of pillars

to rake them up again
Let men numb names

scratch winds that blow

listen to the stories

but what you know you know
And knowing is enough

for mountains such as these

where nothing long remains

houses walls or trees

<~>
“I would recommend On Hearing a Name Long Unspoken. This poem is from Cohen’s 1964 collection, Flowers for ******, which deals with the trauma of the Holocaust and its legacy in 1960s Canada. In this book Cohen describes himself as a ‘front-line writer’ trying to understand totalitarianism, and the poems aim to critique his readers’ complacency in the violence of the world wars, anti-Semitism and colonialism. In On Hearing a Name Long Unspoken, Cohen asks his readers to consider how atrocities ‘that sound of other places’ also ‘happened here.’ He wants us to remember the lives of real people, to remember where people have found solidarity and protection, as well as how they have been oppressed because he is concerned that the stories that are told about the past will make it feel distant and unreal.”

KAIT PINDER, assistant professor of English at Acadia University