I will be never again, the cup of your need

Even though you outwit me, I’m not going back to you. 

Even though the purity of your love is affirmed by the 

unanimous quiver of every feather in the celestial host, 

I am not going back to the axe of your love, O triumph- 

ant husbandman and lasso king of the gateless horses, 

I am not going back to you, even though I squirm in 

your arms and surrender to your will the total essence 

of my dusty shell here in this captured sweat-hall, I am 

never coming back, I swear by the rent curtain of my 

virginity and the blood-thick silence between the 

bridgeless worlds, that I will lie to you forever, and I 

will be never again, the cup of your need. 

 

[Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) 'A Woman’s Decision', from Leonard Cohen: Poems and Songs, part of Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets]