Who By Fire | “Who shall I say is calling”

Who By Fire

And who by fire, who by water
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial
Who in your merry merry month of May
Who by very slow decay
And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate
Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt
And who by avalanche, who by powder
Who for his greed, who for his hunger
And who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident
Who in solitude, who in this mirror
Who by his lady's command, who by his own hand
Who in mortal chains, who in power
And who shall I say is calling?

Comments

This song is an adaptation of a Jewish prayer recited on the High Holidays, U­netanah Tokef. It is based on an ancient tradition that on a certain day of the year the Book of Life is opened, and in it is inscribed the names of everyone who will live and everyone who will die that coming year, “who by fire, who by water.”

Not surprisingly Cohen limits his adaptation to those who will die. He was someone “with a mandate from God to enter the Dark” (The Flame, p. 263), and through his songs and poems, he takes us there too.

Cohen first asks God who is going to die and in what way, and then he asks, “And who shall I say is calling?” This is not part of the original prayer. It makes one think of those situations where someone answers a phone call, but the call is not for them. So they become a messenger, and at some point they ask for the person’s name. In the song, Cohen is the messenger for those being called by God to the other side.

If one is familiar with the Jewish Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament) this brings to mind the story of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 3). Moses is given a mandate from God to lead the Hebrew people out of Egypt and into the Promised land. At a certain point Moses has a question for God. “When I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I say to them?” Then God gives Moses the name, YHWH, which translated into English is I Am. But this is in fact an abbreviated version of God’s full sentence name, which is I Am Who I Am.

Cohen doesn’t reference this name to his listeners, at least not in this song. But he does in “Born In Chains,” also named “Out of Egypt”.

Word of words
And measure of all measures
Blessed is the Name
The Name be blessed
Written on my heart
In burning letters
That's all I know
I cannot read the rest

Moses was YHWH’s messenger. He communicated to the people of Israel that God was calling them out of oppressive Egypt and into the promised land. In “Who By Fire” Cohen sang about another call, that day when God calls each of us out of this life and into the dark of the next.

Share your responses to the above lyrics and commentary here. Different points of view and disagreements are welcome, but please be respectful. Anything disrespectful will be removed.