A year ago [2003] Leonard gave me a lyric to play around with. He really loved the arrangement but said now he'd have to pen a whole new lyric that lived up to the music. The rewrite took about six months, which is a nanosecond in Cohen writing time. Both lyrics were strong, but »On That Day« was more relevant to the times.

I originally wrote that music to a different lyric. Leonard sat with the track for several months before deciding on a rewrite. We both agreed »On That Day« was more worthy of the arrangement, which is rather solemn. I didn’t have any problem with the lyrical content; it’s my viewpoint of the event as well.

I want to start with my observation that »On That Day« and »Villanelle For Our Times« are intentionally connected in many ways and it is difficult to speak of one without comparing it to the other. Located as they are at the heart of the album, (in vinyl days-one would have completed the A side and the other would have begun the B side), they stand together inviting comparison. One senses that, at least, since Various Positions there has been a conscious effort on Leonard's part to have some type of overall structure to his albums, and I think the centrality of the placement of these songs was a studied choice.
While »On That Day« is one of the briefest songs that Leonard ever recorded, with a simple accompaniment of organ-like synth and earthy Jew's harp, the hymnlike arrangement is distinctive and captivating. When I heard it in New York at 2004 Event, it was the most memorable song for me that evening upon first hearing it.
Filled with impersonal pronouns – »some people,« »they,« – the protagonists are never identified, but it is clear that there are two sides-us and them. The causes of the conflict are put forth for speculation – »sins against G-d«, «crimes in the world«, »women unveiled, our slaves and our gold.« The narrator refuses to take a stand on this with the derisive »I wouldn't know.« Even the way that Leonard sings this line with an audible disgust, it is clear that looking back for causes does not interest the narrator. It is not until the narrator asks us, the listener, about our reaction and defines it with only two choices-»did you go crazy or did you report?« that we get a sense of what does interest the narrator. It is interesting that he inserts the line, »I won't take you to court« as it harks back to some of the legal imagery that he has used so effectively in songs like »A Singer Must Die«, »The Traitor« and »The Law«. It also suggests the Biblical judgment day and provides an introduction to the connection of Frank Scott, poet and law professor.
Leonard may have been a student of Scott's when he briefly attended Law School at McGill. It is more likely that he was familiar with Scott from the Montreal poetry circles in which they both traveled. Scott, who lost a brother in World War I, argued prior to World War II for the right of Canada to remain neutral in what he then viewed as a »European conflict.« In a rather sarcastic poem, he writes:

The British troops at the Dardanelles
Were blown to bits by British shells
Sold to the Turks by Vickers.
And many a brave Canadian youth
Will shed his blood on foreign shores,
And die for Democracy, Freedom, Truth,
With his body full of Canadian ores,
Canadian nickel, lead and scrap,
Sold to the German, sold to the Jap,
With Capital watching the tickers.

By 1942, Scott had changed his mind and recognized the conflict and, indeed, helped to draft his political party's (CCF) suppport for the democratic war effort. This quote from Sandra Djwa in her excellent article on Scott helps illuminate the changing psychological landscape that Scott traversed:
»It was also during the early war years when Scott was studying at Harvard on a Guggenheim fellowship that his interest in a more inward poetry was revived. The Canadian scholar and critic, E.K. Brown, invited to be a guest editor of Poetry (Chicago), asked Scott to submit some poetry. The two poems which Scott sent, 'Cornice' and 'Armageddon' reveal a developing awareness of the complexity of human psychology:

This foe we fight is half our own self.
He aims our gunsight as we shoot him down.

The social concerns of the 'thirties, the debacle of the Spanish Civil War and the new psychology of the 'forties had deepened Scott's poetry.«
By the early 1970's, Scott had further developed his constitutional philosophy enough to embrace the War Powers Act during the FLQ crisis in Quebec saying that (the Act) »gave back to me my civil liberties which were being steadily eroded by the F.L.Q. terrorists.«
In an interview he gave in 1971, Scott quoted his former Dean at McGill, Percy Corbett for this definition of law: »Law is that set of institutions which most subject men's passions to their reason.« He also said that law is »crytallized politics« and shares with poetry a concern for the spirit of man. In that same interview, Scott says:
»You see I believe (to use a phrase I borrowed from the historian Berkhardt) 'the state can be a work of art'. In other words man's creativity can come out in his politics and be expressed in his constitution. In fact that's what happens all the time. You can create a constitution which will make one kind of a country like Fascist Spain, or a constitution which will make another kind of a country like Communist Russia, or you can make one as the Americans did when they started, with a very great contribution towards the notion of a form of participatory democracy.«
I think that this begins to shed some light on his line from »Villanelle For Our Time« –»Men shall know Commonwealth again.«
These two works, »On That Day« and »Villanelle For Our Time« placed together by Leonard offer two distinct and at times opposing viewpoints. The imagery is in sharp contrast with one another:
»On That Day« / »Villanelle For Our Time«
»I wouldn't know« / »From bitter searching of the the heart«
»Wounded New York» / »Whose symbols are the millions slain«
»I'm just holding the fort« / »We rise to play a greater part«
»sins against g-d, crimes in the world« / »Reshaping narror law and art«
»our slaves and our gold« / »neither race nor creed remain«
»Some people say« / »This is the faith from which we start«
It would seem that »On That Day« would be the visceral reaction while »Villanelle For Our Time« would be the more cerebral and considered despite its invocation of the searching of the heart. Regardless of our reaction to them, these two works inform our response to most of the album. »Did you go crazy or did you report« seems to echo the pyschological struggle that Scott refers to in his poem, »This foe we fight is half our own self.« Coming to terms, both physically and pyschologically to a changed world is indeed a testament to the enduring spirit of a man turning 70. One harks back to his line, »I haven't been this happy since the end of World War II.« To face this bitter conflict again is no one's desire and I'm quite confident that Leonard shares this sentiment.

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