QUESTIONS FOR SHOMRIM?...

[Zanterlan]

Hey, I was curious about a Cohen poem I saw online. I've been a fan of his music for many years, but haven't read any of his poetry books.

At this site: http://www.auphr.org/ - and a few others, I saw the poem Questions for Shomrim, where he strongly criticizes the policies of the state of Israel:

And will my people build a new Dachau
And call it love,
Security,
Jewish culture
For dark-eyed children
Burning in the stars
Will all our songs screech
Like the maddened eagles of the night
Until Yiddish, Arabic, Hebrew, and Vietnamese
Are a thin thread of blood clawing up the side of
Unspeaking steel chambers
I know you, Chaverim
The lost young summer nights of our childhood
We spent on street corners looking for life
In our scanty drops of Marx and Borochov.
You taught me the Italian Symphony

And the New World
And gave a skit about blowing up Arab children.
You taught me many songs
But none so sad
As napalm falling slowly in the dark
You were our singing heroes in '48
Do you dare ask yourselves what you are now
We, you and I, were lovers once
As only wild nights of wrestling in golden snow
Can make one love
We hiked by moonlight
And you asked me to lead the Internationale
And now my son must die
For he's an Arab
And my mother, too, for she's a Jew
And you and I
Can only cry and wonder
Must Jewish people
Build our Dachaus, too?

They said the poem was from the 1970s, but none of the sites I found in a Google search said which book(s) of his it was published in. Does anyone here know?...

Thanks!

[jarkko]

The poem has not been printed in any of his books.

[~greg]

found this ...

From: "Ron Cohen" <rony@...>
Date: Sun Jun 2, 2002 10:55 am
Subject: Questions for Shomrim / Leonard Cohen


Leonard Cohen (From my autobiography)

This poem, first publsihed in the early 1970's, is,
tragically, still pertainent today. It was also sent
anonymously to a number of rabbis, selected at random,
in New York City and posted on traffic lights,
lampposts, and other places. The word "Shomrim" refers
to members of the left-wing, Zionist youth organizaion
Hshomer Hatzair that supported a binational state in
Palestine/Israel when I was close to them.

QUESTIONS FOR SHOMRIM

And will my people build a new Dachau
And call it love,
Security,
Jewish culture
For dark-eyed children
Burning in the stars
Will all our songs screech
Like the maddened eagles of the night
Until Yiddish, Arabic, Hebrew, and Vietnamese
Are a thin thread of blood clawing up the side of
Unspeaking steel chambers

I know you, Chaverim
The lost young summer nights of our childhood
We spent on street corners looking for life
In our scanty drops of Marx and Borochov.
You taught me the Italian Symphony
And the New World
And gave a skit about blowing up Arab children.
You taught me many songs
But none so sad
As napalm falling slowly in the dark
You were our singing heroes in '48
Do you dare ask yourselves what you are now
We, you and I, were lovers once
As only wild nights of wrestling in golden snow
Can make one love
We hiked by moonlight
And you asked me to lead the Internationale
And now my son must die
For he's an Arab
And my mother, too, for she's a Jew
And you and I
Can only cry and wonder
Must Jewish people
Build our Dachaus, too?

- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeace ... scount=100

(a difference in where the 2 paragraphs are broken:
"You taught me the Italian Symphony / And the New World "
vs
"Unspeaking steel chambers / I know you, Chaverim"
- 2nd way makes more sense)

-----

"This poem, first publsihed in the early 1970's"
Not in a book.
But where?

It isn't clear if this
"From my autobiography"
paragraph, which appears, in part, with the poem
on most of the internet pages that the poem appears on,
was written by LC, or by this poster, "Ron Cohen".

The misspellings may suggest the latter.

It's easy to imagine LC referring to his unpublished autobiography.
I just never imagined him running around stapling his poems to lampposts!

[Tchocolatl]

Do you have the full e-mail address, Greg? I guess not, because you would have send a e-mail to ask this Ron what it was exactly, would you have? Would it be a lack of ethic for a wbmtr?

You know to me it seems like another "family affair". You know, you can want to have an explantation eyes to eyes with somebody or few people in privacy withtout having the whole world witness this.

Nevertheless it is not written in the tone Cohen uses to use for his "commercial" poems, although I could imagine him easyly being sensitive to such a subject.

In 70, I could imagine him also having this stambling on lamppost (Papa Freud, is this in the hope that people would about justice and harmony?)

[~greg]

...Would it be a lack of ethic for a wbmtr? ...

?
wbmtr = wideband magnetic tape recorder?
??



My current best guess is that this "Ron Cohen" is "Ronald Cohen"
("Ronald D. Cohen"),
- a cultural anthropologist who taught at McGill, among other places.

Ronald Cohen (+ Jeff Place) compiled and annotated the 5-CD box set
"The Best of Broadside", on the Smithsonian Folkways label, which
came out in 2000.

He also edited: "Red Dust and Broadsides: A Joint Autobiography
by Pete Seeger (Foreword), Agnes Cunningham, Gordon Friesen.", out in 1999.

-- which may be what he (Ron Cohen) meant by "my autobiography".


Cunningham and Friesen started "Broadside", which was published
from 1962 to 1988.

LC was an elevator operator in NY at some point during that time span.
And he may very well have submitted a poem or two to Broadside.
This would have been expected of him.

A lot of Broadside poems were posted all around the place -by its readers.

---

"Broadside" was a cornerstone of the '60s, and an integral part of my youth.

If you don't know anything about it then this Amazon review
is a suitable introduction:

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Historically, a broadside was a song (without music) or poem printed on one side of paper, dealing with a topical issue that usually was of a political nature. Itinerant writers peddled broadsides for a few cents, and their message served to spread the news or perhaps create a controversy about a current event.
In 1962 Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen began publication of Broadside, a topical song magazine that quickly would help to start a national movement. After the cold war '50s, a social, cultural, and political revolution was in the air. Broadside began publishing hundreds of songs of social dissatisfaction by musicians who later became the leading lights of the folk and protest movements. Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, and dozens more all had their songs first published in Broadside.

This five-CD set is a marvelously comprehensive document of the magazine's songs and songwriters, all of whom were recorded by Folkways Records. The lyrics of each song are printed and extensive information is given about the context in which the song was created. Background material is provided on all of the songwriters, too.

The discs are compiled primarily around the main topics: labor, nuclear weapons, social injustice, Vietnam, civil rights. Eighty-nine songs in all are featured, most of which loosely could be termed "folk music" in style: basic rhythms, acoustic instruments, spirited singers. Listening to the songs and following the annotations serve to remind one of an era of potent protest in this country when music really mattered, and the songs themselves were the primary means of expressing dissatisfaction and disillusionment.

Broadside was a small publication, primarily a labor of love, but its historic legacy looms large when all of its material is brought together in such a well-researched, well-presented compilation as this one. --Wally Shoup

Product Description
The Best of Broadside, Anthems of the American Underground from the Pages of Broadside Magazine. 89 songs, including some never commercially released. Compiled and annotated by Jeff Place and Ronald D. Cohen. 5-CD boxed set. It was a small underground magazine smuggled out of a New York City housing project in a baby carriage, filled with new songs by artists who were too creative for the folkies and too radical for the establishment. Underground--yet Bob Dylan, Janis Ian, Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, Phil Ochs, Malvina Reynolds, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Pete Seeger, and dozens of others first published songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," "Little Boxes," and "Society's Child," in Broadside. The Best of Broadside features 89 songs from the Folkways collection, tapes from the Broadside magazine office, and some tracks released on other labels. The set contains a variety of performers, topics, and musical styles that tell tales spanning the 25 years of the Broadside era (1962-1988), but many of them address contemporary issues as well, since the new millennium has not see the end of warfare, nuclear threat, ethnic conflict, immigrants' suffering, women's unequal rights, ecological devastation, and social injustice. This is the underground music that fueled the innocent-sounding Folk Revival on the one hand and the explosions of angry rock and rap on the other. The Best of Broadside brings an era, its musicians, and its many stories to a new audience. The extensive notes feature the graphics of the original Broadside magazine and provide information on the careers of its many musicians with extensive discographies, the stories behind most of the songs as well as their full texts. They also describe the dramatic history of the magazine itself--a remarkable achievement of dedicated musicians and social activists.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004 ... 74&s=music

(I've got the box set, but I haven't gone through it yet.

Those times - sure were different!)

[Tchocolatl]

LC
was an elevator operator in NY at some point during that time span.
And he may very well have submitted a poem or two to Broadside.
This would have been expected of him.

Louis Coburn?

Let pass through the box set, and maybe...

[Dem]

Can we know for sure if this "Questions for Shomrim"
poem was indeed written by Leonard Cohen?

Jarkko? Marie? Tom?

Anybody else?

Dem

[UrPal]

I'm interested to know who wrote the poem, but, whoever did, when I've read it a few times in the last few days it's struck me as a good poem, and, in that sense, and in the sense that it is concerned with issues that have been on LC's creative mind throughout his life, it seems to me it could be easily taken for Leonard Cohen's even if it's not.

These lines particularly stand-out for me:

You taught me many songs
But none so sad
As napalm falling slowly in the dark

It brings to mind some of the slo-mo images of helicopters and streaming flames falling on forests in Apocalypse Now to the extent that I'm wondering whether Francis Coppola read it some time (or maybe even wrote it? ).

It also caused me to look up "Borochov" on Wikipedia, which was an education of itself into an aspect of history with which I'm unfamiliar.

[Womanfromaroom]

It also caused me to look up "Borochov" on Wikipedia, which was an education of itself into an aspect of history with which I'm unfamiliar.

Yes, it might also be an interesting, educative read for those among us who claim that Zionism "IS" racism as such...

[MarieM]

This poem was NOT written by Leonard. This was confirmed by Robert Kory a few days ago and then by Leonard himself.

[UrPal]

Thanks for providing certainty. And congratulations to the poet - I wonder whether the Ronald Cohen theory stacks up? The rather too "comradely" & political nature of the poem did count against it having been correctly ascribed.

A "Flowers for Hitler Diaries" episode then

[Womanfromaroom]

Urpal, you are right, I agree that it is a good poem, even if it is not one of Leonard's. Well, somehow I have been sceptical about this having been written by him, anyway - "Questions for Shorim" seems a tiny little bit too straightforward and unsubtle for a Leonard poem, in a way, it seems to lack the specific Leonard tone... But still, as I have said, I like it all the same!

[Dem]

Marie thanks for claryfing this.

Dem

[UrPal]

And will my people build a new Dachau
And call it love,
Security,
Jewish culture
For dark-eyed children
Burning in the stars

....

And now my son must die
For he's an Arab
And my mother, too, for she's a Jew
And you and I
Can only cry and wonder
Must Jewish people
Build our Dachaus, too?

Another thing I like about the poem, and wonder if it's deliberate or accidental, is how the opening and closing stanzas turn the final verse of Blake's Jerusalem on its head:

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land

...which makes me wonder whether the author might be British?

[Womanfromaroom]

Good observation, UrPal! But then, he might just have watched "Last Night of the Proms"...