Leonard Cohen — If It Were Spring

If it were Spring and I killed a man, I would change him to leaves and hang him from a tree, a tree in a grove at the edge of a dune, where small beasts came to flee the sun. Wind would make him part of song, and rain would cling like tiny crystal worlds upon his branch of leaf-green skies, and he would bear the dance of fragile bone, brush of wings against his maps of arteries, and turn up a yellow-stomached flag to herald the touring storm. o my victim, ou would grow your season as I grew mine, under the spell of growth, an instrument of the blue sky, an instrument of the sun, a palm above the dark, splendid eyes. What language the city will hear because of your death, anguish explain, sorrow relieve. Everywhere I see the world waiting you, the pens raised, walls prepared, hands hung above the strings and keys. And come Autumn I will spin a net between your height and earth to hold your crisp parts. In the fields and orchards it must be turning Spring, look at the faces clustered around mine. And I hear the irrefutable argument of hunger whispered, spoken, shouted, but never sung. I will kill a man this week; before this week is gone I will hang him to a tree, I will see this mercy done.