A while back Rebecca Buck wrote:


>My former husband and I chose as our song One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong.
>We sang and played it together, never realizing how horrifically true
>it all was.


I couldn't help thinking of this a few days ago when I was listening
to a tape of the Oct. 6, 1974, show from Frankfurt. Cohen introduces
the song with these words:
    A song from the other side of the marriage bed--
    The windows are open; the lovers are gone.


This is probably my favorite Cohen song, if I had to choose.


A couple of other references from concerts. Here in Boston at the
show two years ago, someone in the audience yelled out, "One of
Us Cannot Be Wrong" and Cohen replied, "Right!" He did the song
later that evening. And in Oslo in 1985, Cohen can be heard
saying to his band, "I lit a thin green candle," indicating perhaps
that he no longer refers to the song by its original, more obscure
(and, in my opinion, preferable) title.

 We've already talked about this song, but I include it again just for
completeness. This is the one song on his first album in which Cohen's
humoristic vein appears. Also, his uninhibited howling.


         I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me.
         But the room just filled up with mosquitos,
         they heard that my body was free.
         Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night
         and I put it in your little shoe.
         And then I confess that I tortured the dress
         that you wore for the world to look through.


         I showed my heart to the doctor: he said I just have to quit.
         Then he wrote himself a prescription,
         and your name was mentioned in it!
         Then he locked himself in a library shelf
         with the details of our honeymoon,
         and I hear from the nurse that he's gotten much worse
         and his practice is all in a ruin.


         I heard of a saint who had loved you,
         so I studied all night in his school.
         He taught that the duty of lovers
         is to tarnish the golden rule.
         And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure
         he drowned himself in the pool.
         His body is gone but back here on the lawn
         his spirit continues to drool.


         An Eskimo showed me a movie
         he'd recently taken of you:
         the poor man could hardly stop shivering,
         his lips and his fingers were blue.
         I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes
         and I guess he just never got warm.
         But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice,
         oh please let me come into the storm.