[By The Rivers Dark] is a reference to the Book of Psalms (Psalm 137): the children of Israel are in exile, their captors asked them to sing, but they refuse because they can not celebrate sacred songs in a foreign land. In the Psalm it is said: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my arm fall, my tongue cleave to my palate.’ I got this idea of applying Jerusalem to Babylon. This song is about reconciliation between the profane and the sacred.1
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen – By The Rivers Dark
From Ten New Songs
I am republishing selected posts from my former Leonard Cohen site, Cohencentric, here on AllanShowalter.com (these posts can be found at Leonard Cohen). This entry was originally posted Mar 2, 2017.
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- Je Ne Suis Qu’un Poete Mineur [I’m Just A Minor Poet] by Gilles Medioni, L’Express (France): October 4, 2001 [translated from French] [↩]