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 have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by
If I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you

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?"

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free."

     These are the words of one of my favorite musicians, Leonard Cohen, from his song “Bird on a Wire”. As I listened to this song for the first time in a long while the stanza, “But I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong; I will make it all up to thee”, really hit me in a different way than it ever had before. Perhaps because, since I have been considering theology more closely now than when I had first begun to examine Cohen’s lyrics, I thought of the way God promised Moses that He would lead the people out of Egypt. Moses asked who he should tell the people sent him as their deliver and God answered, “Tell them, I AM sent you.”; for there is no other name greater than Yahweh. And before that, God swore to Abraham about which the author of Hebrews makes this comment “¹³For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, ¹⁴saying, "Surely I will bless you and multiply you." ¹⁵And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. ¹⁶For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. ¹⁷So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, ¹⁸so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.” Likewise in the stanza I set apart, Cohen swears by two certain things: the existence of the words of the very song in which the oath is made and by the certainty of things wrongly done; if one thing we do in this life is certain it is doing things wrong. So an oath by the things we have done wrong contains two aspects to observe: the promise is in the certainty of the words of the swearing itself (sort of: “I promise by this promise that I will…”) and the great irony of making a promise on broken promises. In essence Cohen promises to make up for all that he has done wrong by swearing on the historical certainty of all that he has done wrong. And the promise rests on the honor of the song, by the truth of the song itself, he will make up for all he has done wrong. Circular and self-attesting as it may be, the words are gripping and their beauty may lie in their honest arrogance.