I Long to Hold Some Lady

I Long to Hold Some Lady - context Summary

Published in 1964 Collection

Leonard Cohen's poem, published in his 1964 collection Flowers for Hitler, presents a compact scene of erotic longing and frustrated desire. The speaker yearns to hold a woman whose actual love is absent or unreachable, framing her as both idealized and remote—like a masterpiece in a fortified town visited by pilgrims and priests. The poem balances sensual warmth with emotional distance and includes a resigned note about the impossibility of possession. It reflects themes central to Cohen's early work: longing, absence, and the moral/poetic tension between body and solitude.