Story of Isaac

Oy. This is the song, on a scratchy old second-hand LP, that got me hooked on Cohen. The whole album is absolutely brilliant but SO dry that it doesn't work for everybody. If you imagine it to be songs from a desert, more than a room, it begins to make more sense. Anyway, this song in particular touches on so much of what his work was about, except for the fact that there's no sex in it. It mines his deep-seated spirituality and also brilliantly reimagines an ancient parable from the point of view of the one who suffers the impact of the teaching; the boy was moments from death at his father's hand, stayed by an act of profound mercy. Cohen evokes the innocence and vulnerability of the boy to show how important it is that we, as a race, aspire to some of that same merciful quality. The last lines are wrong up there: "Have mercy on our uniform, man of peace or man of war, the peacock spreads his fan." It's a final prayer. Cohen takes the unusual stand of singling out neither the warrior nor the pacifist for blame -- all men are trying to make their mark on the world, and deserving of and hungry for mercy. It's those who act in an unholy way -- those in power who answer to no one but themselves -- that he wants to correct. It's the early work of a poet, to be sure, but it's usually young poets who look at such big-picture stuff.