Oh Crown of Light, oh Darkened One
I never thought we'd meet
You kiss my lips, and then it's done:
I'm back on Boogie Street
A sip of wine, a cigarette
And then it's time to go
I tidied up the kitchenette;
I tuned the old banjo
I'm wanted at the traffic-jam
They're saving me a seat
I'm what I am, and what I am
Is back on Boogie Street
And oh my love, I still recall
The pleasures that we knew;
The rivers and the waterfall
Cohen said in an interview on “Mc Lean’s” Magazine, 2001 : 
 There is an actual Boogie Street in the world. It’s in Singapore. I don’t know if it’s still there. I was coming home from a tour of Australia many years ago and during the day Boogie Street is a scene of intense commercial activity. In fact, there’s a lot of little stalls where bootleg records are sold. This was at a time when it was hard to find my records in the Western world. And they weren’t displayed. But I asked the man if they had any Leonard Cohen, and he went into the tent where he kept his inventory, and he brought an entire box of all my cassettes for a dollar apiece. There was that kind of bazaar feeling. And at night, it was a scene of intense and alarming sexual exchange. Prostitution, and … everything seemed to be available. I don’t even know if it was prostitution. It just seemed to be mutual availability.Boogie Street to me was that street of work and desire, the ordinary life and also the place we live in most of the time that is relieved by the embrace of your children, or the kiss of your beloved, or the peak experience in which you yourself are dissolved, and there is no one to experience it so you feel the refreshment when you come back from those moments. As my old teacher said: “Paradise is a good place to visit, but you can’t live there because there are no toilets or restaurants.” So we all hope for those heavenly moments, which we get in those embraces and those sudden perceptions of beauty and sensations of pleasure, but we’re immediately returned to Boogie Street. 

Boogie Street