Diamonds in the Lines : Leonard Cohen in his own live words

Please Don't Pass Me By (A Disgrace) (1970-)

London,May 1970

I was walking in New York City and I brushed up against the man in front of me. I felt a cardboard placard on his back. And when we passed a streetlight, I could read it, it said "Please don't pass me by - I am blind, but you can see - I've been blinded totally - Please don't pass me by." I was walking along 7th Avenue, when I came to 14th Street I saw on the corner curious mutilations of the human form; it was a school for handicapped people. And there were cripples, and people in wheelchairs and crutches and it was snowing,and I got this sense that the whole city was singing this:

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