Heart with No Companion
Heart with No Companion - meaning Summary
Compassion for the Stranded
Cohen speaks from a place beyond despair, addressing figures who feel stranded or unfulfilled—an unfinished captain, a mother without a cradle, a solitary heart, a soulless soul, a dancer who cannot move. The poem offers a fractured but vast love and insists on keeping promises even when they seem meaningless. Its repeated refrains create a ritual of consolation, affirming commitment and empathy for those living with absence and longing.
Read Complete AnalysesNow I greet you from the other side Of sorrow and despair With a love so vast and shattered It will reach you everywhere And I sing this for the captain Whose ship has not been built For the mother in confusion Her cradle still unfilled For the heart with no companion For the soul without a king For the prima ballerina Who cannot dance to anything Through the days of shame that are coming Through the nights of wild distress Though your promise count for nothing You must keep it nonetheless You must keep it for the captain Whose ship has not been built For the mother in confusion Her cradle still unfilled For the heart with no companion For the soul without a king For the prima ballerina Who cannot dance to anything And I greet you from the other side Of sorrow and despair With a love so vast and shattered It will reach you everywhere
It also seems likely that this poem/lyric was written during the time Cohen was living in a Buddhist monastery in California. The chorus consists of what might be thought of as zoans, i.e. impossibles. A captain who doesn't have a ship, a mother who doesn't have a child, and a ballerina who cannot dance. These are fundamentally impossible, and yet, Cohen still defines these people as captain, mother and ballerina, perhaps suggesting that they are meant to be those things, and still might be in the future. Unlike the three impossibles, the heart with no companion is not fundamentally impossible. But Cohen seems to link it to the three other situations he mentions, as if to suggest that the heart's natural state is not alone.