Leonard Cohen

Steer Your Way

Steer Your Way - meaning Summary

Steering Through Moral Doubt

The poem addresses an intimate, persevering effort to navigate spiritual and moral disillusionment. The speaker urges the heart to "steer" past religious institutions, consumer culture, romantic compromises, and crushing pain. Repetition of temporal measures—year by year, month by month, day by day—frames endurance as gradual practice. The voice admits personal failure and vulnerability while calling for ongoing, humble moral striving despite doubt and the cost of conscience.

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Steer your way past the ruins of the altar and the mall Steer your way through the fables of creation and the fall Steer your way past the palaces that rise above the rot Year by year, month by month, day by day Thought by thought Steer your heart past the truth that you believed in yesterday Such as fundamental goodness and the wisdom of the way Steer your heart, precious heart, past the women whom you bought Year by year, month by month, day by day Thought by thought Steer your way through the pain that is far more real than you That smashed the cosmic model, that blinded every view And please don't make me go there, though there be a God or not Year by year, month by month, day by day Thought by thought They whisper still, the ancient stones The blunted mountains weep As he died to make men holy Let us die to make things cheap And say the mea culpa, which you probably forgot Year by year, month by month, day by day Thought by thought Steer your way, o my heart, though I have no right to ask To the one who was never, never equal to the task Who knows he's been convicted, who knows he will be shot Year by year, month by month, day by day Thought by thought

Richard Hendrick
Richard Hendrick June 06. 2024

Oh my heart, too. RIP, LC

8/2200 - 0