A Thousand Kisses Deep (spoken word) Lyrics
And you handled me like meat
You’d have to be a man to know
How good that feels, how sweet
My mirrored twin, my next of kin
I’d know you in my sleep
And who but you would take me in
A thousand kisses deep
I loved you when you opened like a
Lily to the heat
You see I’m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second hand physique
With all he is, and all he was
A thousand kisses deep
I know you had to lie to me
I know you had to cheat
To pose all hot and hide behind
The veils of sheer deceit
Our perfect porn aristocrat
So elegant and cheap
I’m old but I’m still into that
A thousand kisses deep
It's in between I freeze
Been working out, but its too late
It’s been too late for years
But you look good, you really do
The pride of Boogie Street,
Somebody must have died for you
A thousand kisses deep
The autumn moved across your skin
Got something in my eye
A light that doesn’t need to live
And doesn’t need to die
A riddle in the book of love
Obscure and obsolete
Until witnessed here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep
And I'm still working with the wine
Still dancing cheek to cheek
The band is playing Auld Lang Syne
But the heart will not retreat
I ran with Diz and Dante
I never had their sweep
But once or twice they let me play
A thousand kisses deep
Like a lily to the heat
You see I'm just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet
But you don’t need to hear me now
And every word I speak
It counts against me anyhow
A thousand kisses deep
About
(Note: this is the spoken-word version. For the version set to music on the Sharon Robinson-produced 10 New Songs, see here.)
“A Thousand Kisses Deep” is a work in progress. Per Leonard Cohen:
There are about 30 verses of it that I’ve done and hopefully they’ll work their way into other songs. I think there are six verses in this version. On the Internet, I published 12 verses of the song. (..) It’s taken so long to write and it was so much of my ordinary day even when I was in the meditation hall spending long hours. I suppose I was supposed to be calming my mind or directing it to other areas, but I was working on the rhymes for A Thousand Kisses Deep. I found the mediation hall was an excellent place to work on songs. I could concentrate on a verse, work out the rhymes and the ideas would come.
Still, additional versions are plentiful, with new verses joining older ones to produce the same effect from a different direction. Here’s an example from another spoken version:
Don’t matter is the road is long
Don’t matter if it’s steep
Don’t matter if the moon goes out
And the darkness is complete
Don’t matter if we lose our way
It’s written that we’ll meet
At least that’s what I heard you say
A thousand kisses deepWell that’s my story
I admit it’s broken and its bleak
But all the twisted pieces fit
A thousand kisses deep
The song was first published in Leonard Cohen’s volume Book of Longing:
The sung version can be found here
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- 4.Here It Is
- 5.Love Itself
- A Thousand Kisses Deep (spoken word)
