So Do You

Painting by Tamara De Lampicka

So Do You

Because you are beautiful, but smelled bad,
I knew you had been killed. And you felt the
same about me. You said, "You are an elegant
old man, but you stink." After the long event
of naked interventions, you brought your hands
together and bowed. "Thank you," you said,
"The was the first time I never did anything."
Many are the lovely things I have been told
about my luck, but this was surely the loveliest.
"How do I smell now?" I asked. "Worse than ever,"
you said. "Exactly my impression about you,"
I said. Then you went back to France (or was it
Holland?) and we have remained fast friends ever
since. Sometimes, when the hummingbirds are still,
I can smell you rotting halfway across the world.

Leonard Cohen

from BOOK OF LONGING