Dear Heather

Listening to the new Leonard Cohen album, “Dear Heather.” Achingly beautiful, some of it. Especially, on second listen, “The Faith,” based on a Quebec folk song. “The Nightingale,” which sounds very much like a folk song as well. And the wonderfully funny “Dear Heather.”

Cohen is going back to his roots. He is thinking of legacy. Hoping to be remembered, he remembers those who came before. There are tributes to Irving Layton, F.R. Scott, and A.M. Klein, Montreal poets. It makes me proud to think that Cohen’s international audience is going to learn something of them. There are spoken-word pieces—Cohen was renowned as a poet before he was a songwriter. The songs are folkier than they have been for a while, and Cohen plays a Jew’s harp, a folk instrument.

Cohen actually recites an F.R. Scott poem. A wonderful boon to Canadian literature and to the reputation of F.R. Scott, to think that it will be heard now all around the world. Quite a strong poem too.

And Cohen returns to his roots in another sense as well. His roots as a ladies’ man. The album seems to be a tribute to Venus, the Goddess, to whom he seemed to say farewell last album. Now she’s back again, with some force, as mother, lover, muse. The album is very much about women and about love in the carnal sense.

She is Heather, after whom the album is named. Heather seems to me, as the name implies, to be the goddess fertility; the earth virginally new again every spring. The cycle from birth to death to birth again is celebrated in the song “Because of.” “The Nightingale” too is about nature, renewing every spring as the birds migrate away, then back again. “The Faith” carries the same message, with the refrain “Love, Aren’t You Tired Yet?”

At first glance, if “The Future” was Judeo-Christian, and the last album, “Ten New Songs,” was Buddhist, this one is resolutely pagan. But in fact, it fits with a Buddhist tradition too. Nirvana is Samsara: having achieved the breakthrough to no-self, one returns to the world of illusion and can celebrate it just as it is.

Well done again, Leonard.