Leonard Cohen
We say goodbye to the month of March with Lyrics as Poetry Friday and the song “Bird on a Wire.”
“Bird on a Wire” is a song written in 1968 by Canadian singer, songwriter, poet, and novelist Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016)
The inspiration for “Bird On The Wire” came from Cohen’s time in the ’60s living on the rustic Greek island of Hydra with his girlfriend Marianne Ihlen, the woman depicted on the back cover of Cohen’s LP “Songs from a Room.”
She has related how she helped him out of a depression by handing him his guitar, whereupon he began composing "Bird on the Wire", inspired by a bird sitting on one of Hydra's recently installed phone wires, followed by memories of wet island nights. He finished it in a Hollywood motel.
"The song is so important to me," said Cohen, who frequently opened concerts with it. "It's that one verse where I say that 'I swear by this song, and by all that I have done wrong, I'll make it all up to thee.'"Cohen described "Bird on the Wire" as a simple country song, and the first recording, by Judy Collins in 1968, was indeed done in a country setting.
In the notes to a 2007 rerelease of “Songs From A Room” the song was described as "simultaneously a prayer and an anthem, a kind of Bohemian 'My Way'."
Numerous artists have recorded the song, including Fairport Convention, Joe Cocker, The Neville Brothers, Tim Hardin, K.D. Lang and Johnny Cash.
Click on the following link to see Leonard Cohen sing “Bird on a Wire” at a 1979 concert:
Bird on a Wire
Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee
If I, if I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go b
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you
Oh like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, "You must not ask for so much"
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"
Oh like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
--Leonard Cohen